Places in the modern pentathlon at the 2016 Summer Olympics were largely determined by continental championships, but one place was guaranteed to the host nation.
The host nation Brazil had been guaranteed a single place each in the men's and women's events, while two invitational places would be allocated by UIPM once the rest of the qualifiers were decided. Qualified athletes will also be the winner of the 2015 UIPM World Cup final (held in Minsk, Belarus from June 12 to 14) and the top three finishers at the World Championships in Berlin, Germany, held between June 28 and July 6, 2015. Between January and August 2015, the initial distribution of quotas to the athletes had taken place based on the competition results. Five continental championships afforded twenty places each per gender: one each from Africa and Oceania, five from Asia, eight from Europe, and five from the Americas with a maximum of one quota per NOC (winners from NORCECA and South America, and top three from the 2015 Pan American Games in Toronto, Canada). The top three ranked athletes, having not qualified by any means, were awarded a place at the 2016 UIPM World Championships in Moscow, Russia, while the remaining seven were based on the pentathlon's world rankings as of June 1, 2016. 
