World Athletics announces Ultimate Championship to end the 2026 calendar season...
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| Budapest's National Athletics Centre will host the inaugural Ultimate Championship in 2026 (Paul Merca photo) |
World Athletics Monday announced an innovative new meet called the World Athletics Ultimate Championship, designed to bring together world, Olympic, and Wanda Diamond League champions, along with the year's best performing athletes against each other to crown the ultimate champion.
According to a release put out by the world governing body, $10 million will be set aside, with individual winners receiving $150,000, which is the largest cash prize offered by World Athletics.
The first edition of this meet is set for September 11-13th, 2026 in Budapest, which hosted last year's world championships.
This meet aligns with what World Athletics president Sebastian Coe has visualized for the sport--a final meet that fans can identify as the end of the season, much like how fans identify the Super Bowl as the end of the NFL season, the World Series as the end of the Major League Baseball season, the NBA Finals, etc.
This meet ensures that after 2024, World Athletics will stage a season ending meet in September: the 2025 and 2027 world championships in Tokyo and Beijing; and the 2026 ultimate championships in Budapest and a city to be named later.
Taking place over three evening sessions, each under three hours in duration, the Ultimate Championship will showcase the best of athletics, including sprints, middle and long-distance races, relays, jumps, and throws, ensuring a spectacle that both existing and new fans will not want to miss. Athletes will represent their national teams to ensure that individual success is underpinned by national pride.
“With only the best of the best on show and cutting straight to semi finals and finals, we will create an immediate pressure to perform for athletes aiming to claim the title of the ultimate champion,” said World Athletics President Seb Coe. “The World Athletics Ultimate Championship will be high on action and excitement for fans, setting a new standard for track and field events. Featuring athletics’ biggest stars, it will be a must-watch global sports event and means track and field will host a major global championship in every single year, ensuring for the first time that athletics will enjoy a moment of maximum audience reach on an annual basis.”
The field will come primarily from the world rankings, so this will put pressure on athletes to compete on a consistent basis in meets where world rankings points are awarded. The world rankings takes on greater significance, as opposed to hitting a qualifying mark.
Some questions and takes:
--Is it safe to assume that if there's a field of 8-16 athletes in an event, that there are no restrictions on the number of athletes in the field from one country (in the Olympics, 3 per country is the limit, while in the world championships, 4 is the limit as long as one of the 4 is either the defending world champ or Diamond League champ)?
--Moving forward, will the ultimate champion in each event also get a wild card entry into the following year's world championships? If the world champion in an event and the ultimate champion are different but come from the same country, will that federation get five entries instead of four at worlds? Will World Athletics take away the wild card from the Diamond League winner?
--Will Hungary as the first country to host the ultimate championships get a free entry into an event if they have no athletes ranked in the top 16?
--Who is paying for travel to the meet--World Athletics, or the federations? Also, would the federation override an invitation to an athlete and give it to someone else because the invited athlete has a conflict with the federation's kit sponsor?
--With the introduction of the world rankings a few years ago, this puts pressure on athletes and agents to get into meets that offer bonus points for high placing.
Here's a link to the basics of the world rankings, which explains how athletes earn ranking points. Section 7 (Overall Rankings) shows a chart with placing scores for the various types of meets that are added to the results score (the mark you put up in a meet).
My feeling is that if the ultimate championships are a success, this will drive World Athletics to place a greater emphasis on world rankings instead of qualifying standards for the 2029 & '31 world championships and the 2032 Olympics. As of now, qualifying for both the Olympics and world championships is based on 50% qualifying marks and 50% world rankings.
NOTE: World Athletics contributed to this report.
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