The trend is confirmed. Better: it gets stronger. Like athletics, whose next outdoor world championships will be held in September 2025 in Tokyo, at the Olympic stadium, swimming is also setting up shop in Asia.
The world body for the discipline, World Aquatics, announced Sunday February 11 from Doha, where the global meeting is currently being held, that the 2029 edition of the all-discipline world championships would take place in Beijing.
The candidacy of the Chinese capital was selected by the World Aquatics Bureau, without it being specified that it was in competition with one or more other files.
The dates for the 2029 Worlds have not been announced. They will be later, World Aquatics said. It has also not been decided, at this stage, where the competitions will take place.
At the 2008 Beijing Games, the swimming events were held at the National Aquatic Center, nicknamed the “Water Cube”, an enclosure with 17000 seats, including 11000 temporary, located in the Olympic Park. Built especially for the Games, it has since been transformed into a vast public water park, but retaining its competition and training pools.
Coincidentally with the calendar, the announcement of World Aquatics' decision came on the same day that the Chinese Pan Zhanle broke the 100m world record (46 sec 80) at the start of the 4x100m relay at the Doha World Championships, perfectly launching the Chinese quartet towards the world title.
During the first week of the 2024 Worlds in the capital of Qatar, China won 16 of the 29 gold medals up for grabs. It is well at the top of the nation rankings.
With this designation, China inherits the world championships almost twenty years after the 2011 edition in Shanghai. Asia, for its part, will once again host the event, four years after the 2025 Worlds awarded to Singapore. For 2027, World Aquatics has chosen a safe bet, Budapest, already host of the competition in 2022.
World Aquatics recalls this in a press release: China has organized more than 100 major aquatic competitions, including 37 in Beijing. For the year 2024 alone, it organizes the Artistic Swimming World Cup in Beijing (April 5-7), the final of the Diving World Cup in Xi'an (April 19-21), then the World Cup of swimming in Shanghai (October 18-20).
In addition to the World Championships in all disciplines, Beijing will also have to organize the Masters World Championships in 2029. A double also imposed by World Aquatics this year in Doha.
