World Athletics Wikipedia

“Budapest is truly honored to be the inaugural host city for the highly innovative World Athletics Ultimate Championship. Since 2008, Matt has been charged with managing the company’s digital, video and social media assets in all events and athlete web related outreach, handling the processing of GA&M athlete visas, as well as managing GA&M’s developing marathon talent in Ethiopia. Because of our outstanding relationships with some of the top meet directors in Europe and throughout the world, GA&M has a remarkable record of getting its athletes into the most prestigious events in the sport.

World Athletics Council

The organisation hosts the annual World Athletics Awards, formerly the World Athletics Gala until 2017, at the end of each year to recognise the achievements of athletes and other people involved in the sport. With World Athletics having recognised the sport of mountain running in 2002, the annual WMRA World Cup meetings received official sanctioning in 2006, organised under World Mountain Running Association. The track and field circuit was rebranded as the IAAF World Athletics Tour in 2006, which removed the global rankings and the IAAF Grand Prix II (replaced with a level of meetings given permit status by continental governing bodies).

The organisation

The World Athletics Championships is the primary global athletics championships held by World Athletics. At the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London, for balance between team play and individual level the first time at an international athletics event, the guides received medals, such as the pilots in cycling, and the guides at the Paralympic Winter Games have done for a while. Following the model of the Olympics, various other multi-sport events arose during the 20th century, which included athletics as a core sport within the programme from the outset.

The new final format was introduced with a new global performance ranking system for qualification and featured an increased programme of track and field events, mirroring the World Championships in Athletics programme bar the road events, combined events, relays, and the 10,000 metres. Three years later in 1985, an annual track and field circuit was created in the form of the IAAF Grand Prix, which linked existing top-level one-day meetings with a season-ending IAAF Grand Prix Final for a selection of men’s and women’s events. Women’s track and field athletics began at the 1928 Amsterdam Games, growing steadily to an almost identical programme to the men’s. The ancient Games at Olympia began simply with foot races, only occasionally complicated by dressing the runners in infantry armour or making them carry soldiers’ shields. Tara Davis-Woodhall’s 7.20m world lead, Masai Russell’s 12.26 hurdles win and Sha’Carri Richardson’s victorious return highlighted Los Angeles Grand Prix. View the complete start lists for the 2026 Monaco Diamond League Herculis EBS meeting on July 10, featuring Olympic champions, world champions and the world’s top track and field stars.

Hot and humid conditions in Tokyo, plus the rounds, mean a little less concern for David Rudisha’s 1min 40.91s world record, which was set 13 years ago, but with Wanyonyi’s front-running style and Arop’s finishing kick, a fast race is assured. Now they return to the track where Warholm set his 45.94s world record at the 2021 Olympics, and Benjamin finished second (46.17s). This summer, he produced the quickest 300m hurdles time in history, winning ahead of Benjamin, 28, at his home Diamond League in Oslo. The two-time 400m hurdles Olympic champion has made a bold move in switching to the flat. Naser ran 48.67s at the first Grand Slam Track meet in April, still the fastest time in 2025, and ran 48.70s to break Zurich’s meet record and claim her third Diamond League title.

The first city to host both summer and winter Olympics is now Beijing, following the 2022 Winter Games.

Why the World Athletics Championships matters to fans

Road running competitions are running events (predominantly long distance) which are mainly conducted on courses of paved or tarmac roads, although major events often finish on the track of a main stadium. Meetings range from elite competitions – such as those in the IAAF Diamond League series – to basic all comers track meets, inter-sports club meetings and schools events, which form the grassroots of track and field. Track and field events have become the most prominent part of major athletics championships and many famous athletes within the sport of athletics come from this discipline. The Olympic athletics competition and World Championships in Athletics, and the Paralympic athletics competition and World Para Athletics Championships, are the highest and most prestigious levels of competition in track and field. The most prestigious track and field contests occur within athletics championships and athletics programmes at multi-sport events. In throwing events, athletes are measured by how far they hurl an implement, with the common events being the shot put, discus, javelin, and hammer throw.

• “Following the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games, Beijing has become the first city in the world to have held both summer and winter Olympics.
• The first modern athletics clubs in the world were founded at the University of Cambridge in 1857, and the University of Oxford in 1860; they began an annual varsity match in 1864.
• Athletics’ simplicity and lack of expensive gear make it one of the world’s most common sports.

Athletics, a sport that was founded in antiquity, has continued to adapt through the centuries, offering a dynamic, life-enhancing sport. The most recent world record was in the men’s pole vault final in 2025, when the Swedish Armand Duplantis cleared 6.30 m. By 2005, the only differences were men’s competition in the 50 km walk, and equivalent events in women’s 100 m hurdles and heptathlon to men’s 110 m hurdles and decathlon. Four years later, the 1980 World Championships contained only two newly approved women’s events, (400 metres hurdles and 3000 metres), neither of which featured on the programme for the 1980 Summer Olympics. The 1976 World Championships had just one event – the men’s 50 kilometres walk which was dropped from the Olympic programme for the 1976 Summer Olympics and the IAAF responded by setting up their own contest. Alongside the Olympic Games, the championships represents the highest level of senior international outdoor athletics competition for track and field athletics globally, including marathon running and race walking.

The 1970s running boom in the U.S. popularized road running and boosted its elite status. National championships and annual invitational meets feature discrete track and field competitions. Combined events like the decathlon (men) and heptathlon (women) involve athletes competing in multiple track and field events, with scores tallied for each performance. While adhering to World Athletics’ rules, each sport’s international federation sets its specific details. Today, athletes can earn money for racing, ending past “amateurism” norms.

In May 2019, CAS upheld the rules on the basis that discrimination against the minority of DSD athletes was proportional as a method of preserving access to the female category to a much larger majority of women without DSDs. The rules have been challenged by affected athletes in the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), though no athlete has done so successfully. DSD athletes who are legally female or intersex are subject to specific rules if they have XY male chromosomes, testes rather than ovaries, circulating testosterone in the typical male range (7.7 to 29.4 nmol/L), and are androgen-sensitive so that their bodies make use of that testosterone. International level athletics competitions are mostly divided by sex and World Athletics applies eligibility rules for the women’s category.

The 2009 Jamaican men’s 4x100m relay team’s 37.31s time was later recognized as the world record, after their 2008 Olympic time was voided due to Nesta Carter’s (absent from the World Championships team) disqualification. Ben Johnson’s 1987 World Championships 100m record of 9.83s was rescinded in 1989 after he admitted to steroid use from 1981 to 1988. American athletes have set the most world records (fifteen), followed by Jamaica and Great Britain (four each). The first World Championships world record was set by Czechoslovakia’s Jarmila Kratochvílová, who won the 1983 women’s 400m in 47.99s. Duplantis, 25, praised Emmanouil Karalis, his Greek rival who set a national record this year by vaulting 6.08m.