Running News Daily

World Para Athletics Championships in Japan postponed until 2024

A year after the Paralympics were held in Tokyo, this summer’s World Para Athletics Championships in Kobe have been pushed back again

The World Para Athletics Championships, which were meant to take place between August 26 – September 4 in Kobe, Japan, have been postponed until 2024.

The championships were already pushed back until 2022 from 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic but after a request by the Kobe Local Organising Committee (LOC) that date will be moved again.

“Both World Para Athletics and the LOC have reached an understanding that the competition will not take place in 2022,” said World Para Athletics.

“Both parties are working closely to assess the feasibility of a postponement to 2024 in order to retain the World Championships within the Paris 2024 cycle.”

That means that the next scheduled championships will take place in Paris next year, with Kobe then taking the reins in 2024, the same year France host the Paralympics.

Dubai hosted the last and ninth edition of the World Para Athletics Championships back in 2019.

When Kobe host the event in 2024 it will be the first time that athletes compete at a World Para Athletics Championships in the Far East although both Japan (1964 and 2020) and China (2008) have hosted the Paralympics.

The first World Para Athletics Championships took place in Berlin in 1994 and since 2011 they have been held in the same years as the World Athletics Championships.

It remains to be seen whether the International Paralympic Committee stick to that format because if they do it would mean that the World Para Athletics Championships would take place in 2023, 2024 and 2025.