ac losses in superconductors are generated by the magnetic flux and current penetration into them. To reveal the magnetic flux and current penetration processes in twisted multifilamentary coated superconductors in which the thin superconductor layer is subdivided into filaments and then twisted as a whole for ac loss reduction, a theoretical model for electromagnetic field analysis was developed based on the power law E-J (electric-field-current-density) characteristic for the superconductor and a thin strip approximation of the conductor. The developed theoretical model was implemented into a numerical code using the finite element method to calculate and visualize the current and magnetic flux distributions. The magnetization losses in twisted multifilamentary coated superconductors exposed to ac transverse magnetic fields were calculated from the temporal evolutions of the current distribution to demonstrate the effect of the twisted multifilamentary architecture on ac loss reduction. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.