Arnold Schwarzenegger and the former World's Strongest Man teamed up in a highlight-worthy moment at the 2026 Arnold Classic UK.

On March 28, the official Instagram account of Arnold Classic Festival UK shared a short clip of Arnie working out on the expo floor with Hafthor Bjornsson.

The video showed The Mountain performing a set of plate-loaded seated machine rows. The Austrian Oak counted the reps and encouraged Thor throughout the set.

In the next scene, the 7-time Mr. Olympia repeats the same exercise. However, the pair kept the weight light owing to Thor's injury.

Before this event, Bjornsson was expected to compete in the 2026 Arnold Strongman Classic. Unfortunately, the three-time Arnold Classic strongman winner later withdrew as he still wasn't fully recovered from a rotator cuff injury.

On a YouTube video, he announced the news by saying, “I have some sad news, guys — I will have to pull out of the Arnold Strongman Classic. When I got the invitation, it was like 50-50 anyway”.

He said, “I need to just take this time to heal up, train wisely, and focus on the deadlift. I have a massive deadlift event coming up in 20 weeks. That time frame should be good because I’ll also only be focusing on a deadlift”.

However, this isn't the first time the duo has been spotted together.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Hafthor Bjornsson went viral due to the massive size gap

On March 21, Bjornsson shared a photo of himself with the former Mr. Olympia on his X account while attending a restaurant.

The post, where Björnsson was seen standing next to Arnie, was captioned as: “Always great spending time with my friend Arnold Schwarzenegger”.

That post instantly went viral, and some fans started to talk about the size difference between the former Mr. Olympia and the strongman.

Despite standing nearly 6'2, Arnie looked small compared to the 6'9 strongman who had bulked up to well over 440 lbs.

Yet, what did you think of the two fitness icons linking up? Tell us in the comments.

Follow Bodybuilding Bros for more.

Written by

Supradeep Dutta

Edited by

Sagnik Bagchi