The sixteenth season of American Ninja Warrior premiered on June 3, 2024, on NBC. A spin-off from the Japanese reality series Sasuke, it is hosted by Matt Iseman, Akbar Gbaja-Biamila, and Zuri Hall.
For the first time ever, a competitor became the first two-time grand prize winner and consecutively in Vance Walker, who became the first ninja to achieve "Total Victory" twice. In the same season, Caleb Bergstrom became the sixth recorded ninja to achieve total victory, but completed the rope climb just over a second slower than Walker.
The season was officially announced by NBC in late March 2023, though the applications were being accepted from November 19, 2022, until December 16, 2022. The full list of competitors was published on March 15, 2023. Filming for qualifiers moved to Los Angeles, California, where the semifinals remained. Filming for national finals remained in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Filming for the season began on March 15, 2023, and wrapped in early May 2023.
Like in season 15, the qualifying course starts with the Pole Vault and ends with the Warped Wall, with an attempt at the 18.5-foot Mega Wall available for anyone who finishes the course in under 1 minute and 20 seconds; the instant reward for successfully completing the Mega Wall, once again sponsored by Wells Fargo, was doubled to $20,000 this season. The Runoffs also returned; like in the previous season, the bottom two male contestants and two female contestants on the leaderboard (12th and 13th places) would race side-by-side on the four-obstacle course with the winners earning the last spot in the semifinals.
Denotes obstacles created by fans for the Obstacle Design Challenge.
The eight qualifiers, divided into five nights, took place on the lot of Universal Studios Hollywood in Los Angeles, California. Like Season 15, the number of semifinalists remained at 16, and men and women have completely separate leaderboards. The top 11 men and top 3 women advance to the semifinals immediately, while the next two men (12th/13th place) and the next two women (4th/5th place) compete head-to-head in "The Runoffs" for the final spots.
Three new obstacles were introduced in the qualifying course: Reel to Reel, Dangerous Waters, and Duck Duck Goose (an Obstacle Design Challenge creation).
This course introduced one new obstacle, Heavy Metal.
The four semifinal rounds, divided over two nights, were taped at the same Universal Studios lot where the qualifiers were filmed during two nights. This season was the second under the new format which was introduced in Season 15 in which the semifinals have competitors race head-to-head in pairs. They are seeded based on the overall results in the leaderboard table which is created by merging two leaderboards from qualifying courses with the same obstacles. During the races, all the winners and the two losers who reached the farthest obstacle in the least amount of time advanced to the National Finals, unless more than two race losers finished the semi-final course, in that case they all advance to the next round. Meanwhile, the two fastest winners proceed to a modified head-to-head course at the end of each night where they race for a Safety Pass, an option for a second attempt on Stage 1 of the finals.
NOTE: This round's Safety Pass winner, Jay Lewis, was unable to compete in the National Finals due to an injury sustained prior to the event. He was replaced in the National Finals by one of the race losers, James Sannella.
Once again, the National Finals took place along the Las Vegas Strip.
Stage 1 was again spread out over two nights and like before, contestants had 2 minutes and 50 seconds to complete it in order to advance to stage 2. The Barrel Roll, which was previously used in season 13 as well as in two Women's Championships, made its stage 1 debut as the second obstacle.
In addition to those who qualified, two ANW veterans, Ryan Stratis and Jesse "Flex" Labreck, also got to compete via "legacy invites", the former having finished the semi-final course, though neither managed to clear Stage 1. Also, Najee Richardson, who got an invite to run in the National Finals despite losing his race in the semi-finals, failed Stage 1 in what was ultimately his final competition before retiring.
Stage 2 retained its format from the previous season, consisting of head-to-head races with the winners, as well as the two top losers who win their runoff races, all advancing to Stage 3. Seven non-winners all also completed Stage 2, thus only the four fastest of them advanced to the runoffs.
As with all previous seasons, only those competitors who clear Stage 3 will advance to the final stage tower. One new obstacle was introduced in Stage 3, Pizza Party, which eliminated six competitors (including Austin Gray, who, like Najee Richardson, announced his retirement from competition following this tournament).
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</div>Vance Walker became the first two-time American Ninja Warrior and the first to win $1,000,000 twice while Caleb Bergstrom became the sixth American Ninja Warrior and the third runner-up to achieve Total Victory.
On March 18, 2024, NBC revealed the premiere date and timeslot for the season. The program's longtime timeslot, Mondays 8 p.m. ET, was kept (with reruns scheduled to air in various slots due to sports); however for this season, like previous years, specifically to accommodate the 2024 Summer Olympics, episodes would mostly revert back to the previous two-hour format (with some exceptions), after Season 15 consisted mostly of one-hour episodes â mainly during the qualifying and early semifinal rounds â to allow the network to run a competition-based Monday prime time lineup for its Summer 2023 schedule (accompanied by fellow game shows The Wall and The Weakest Link, both of which share the lead out time slot this season).