The aim of the research study was to examine the relationship between athletes’ perfectionism and pre-competitive anxiety and self-confidence. A total of 161 students from the Faculty of Kinesiology, University of Zagreb (Nm=111, Nf=50) participated in the research study. The participants completed the Multidimensional Inventory of Perfectionism in Sport (Stoeber, Otto, Pescheck, Becker, and Stoll, 2007) and the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (Martens, Vealey, and Burton, 1990) and responded to a list of questions about their demographic and sports characteristics. The results show that male and female athletes do not differ in perfectionist tendencies nor in cognitive anxiety. However, a difference was discovered in somatic anxiety and self-confidence: namely, male athletes demonstrate higher levels of selfconfidence and lower levels of somatic anxiety in relation to the female athletes. The results are in line with prior studies. Athletes of team and individual sports do not differ in perfectionist tendencies, self-confidence, and cognitive anxiety, but athletes of individual sports show higher levels of somatic anxiety. In line with prior studies, different forms of perfectionism were differently related to cognitive and somatic anxiety as well as to self-confidence. The results showed a significant positive correlation between adaptive perfectionism and self-confidence as well as a significant negative correlation between adaptive perfectionism and both aspects of anxiety. On the other hand, maladaptive perfectionism is significantly positively correlated with both aspects of anxiety and significantly negatively correlated with self-confidence. Furthermore, in concordance with our expectations, it has been confirmed that on the basis of adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism in athletes, it is possible to explain significant percentage of variance in cognitive and somatic anxiety and in self-confidence. The results enable a better understanding of the factors which lie at the core of pre-competitive anxiety and self-confidence in athletes. On the practical level, the results might be used for educating athletes about the different roles of adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism.