Running News Daily

The new 2023 World Championships entry standards are wild

On Thursday evening, World Athletics published the entry standards for the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest. The time athletes are required to run for automatic qualification is faster than ever.

The championship will run later in the year than in 2022, from Aug. 19 to Aug. 27, 2023. Although these standards mean automatic qualification, there are still ways to qualify through a confusing qualification system that the World Athletics implemented for the World Championships in 2019. If an athlete is highly ranked in their respective event but has not run the standard, the athlete is still eligible for nomination by their national governing body. 

For the first time ever, the mile – both in-stadium and road mile – will now be a qualifying event for the 1500m, while performances achieved on the road in the 5K and 10K will now be eligible for qualification in the 5,000m and 10,000m, respectively. In addition, the top eight athletes in the world cross country rankings not otherwise qualified through other pathways will be considered qualified for the 10,000m.

The 2023 championships will be held in the National Athletics Centre in Budapest, which is currently under construction, and will have a capacity of 36,000.

The 2022 championship standards were similar, but some events have gotten a lot quicker. Most notably, the men’s 800m, 100m, 5,000m and marathon standards have become more challenging, along with the women’s 3,000m steeplechase, 1,500m and 10,000m. The 2022 standards are below.

Due to the postponement of the 2022 World Championships and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, athletes now have five years of straight major games, with Budapest 2023, the Paris Olympics in 2024 and the Tokyo world championships 2025 on the horizon.