World Athletics Championships | |
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Status | Active |
Genre | Athletics World Championships |
Date(s) | Varying |
Frequency | Biennial |
Country | Varying |
Inaugurated | 1983 Helsinki |
Previous event | 2023 Budapest |
Next event | 2025 Tokyo |
Organised by | World Athletics |
Website | worldathletics.org |
The World Athletics Championships, known as the IAAF World Championships in Athletics until 2019, are a biennial athletics competition organized by World Athletics, formerly International Association of Athletics Federations. Alongside Olympic Games, the championship represents the highest level of senior international outdoor athletics competition for track and field athletics globally, including marathon running and race walking. Separate World Championships are held by World Athletics for certain other outdoor events, including cross-country running and half-marathon, as well as indoor and age-group championship.
The World Championships were started in 1976 in response to the International Olympic Committee dropping the men's 50–km walk from the Olympic programme for the 1976 Montreal Olympics, despite its constant presence at the games since 1932. The IAAF chose to host its own world championship event, a month and a half after the Olympics.[1][2] It was the first World Championships that the IAAF had hosted separately from the Olympic Games.
A second limited event was held in 1980, and the inaugural championships in 1983, with all the events, is considered the official start of the competition. Until 1980, the Olympic champions were also considered as reigning world champions.[citation needed]
At their debut, these championships were then held every four years, until 1991 when they switched to a two-year cycle.[3] In 2024, World Athletics announced that the new biennial competition, World Athletics Ultimate Championship, featuring only up to 16 of the world's top-ranked athletes per discipline, would be held every even year from 2026 onwards.[4]
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