The Sports Programme for The World Games 2025 in Chengdu, China is now confirmed. The International World Games Association has reached an agreement with the host city and the international federations on the medal events for TWG 2025 Chengdu, to be held from 7th to 17th August 2025. Over the ten days of competition, a total of 262 gold medals will be awarded in 35 sports and 62 disciplines.
The number of medal events has increased significantly compared to the Games in 2022 in Birmingham, USA. In the summer of 2022 there was a total of 223 decisions. Beginning in exactly 600 days from now, there will be 39 additional events at the Games. The increase is due to an expanded sports programme in line with the IWGA strategy paper “Growth Beyond Excellence”. Amongst other new disciplines, four para disciplines (compared to one para sport in 2022) will be included in the competition programme in Chengdu. At TWG 2025 Chengdu, around 5000 participants coming from more than 100 nations will compete for gold.
The IWGA had already named in the summer the 35 sports that will showcase their best athletes at the Games in China, and the decisions on the individual disciplines were made in the autumn. In a third step, the respective medal events within a discipline have now been agreed. This could be, for example, the individual weight classes in the martial arts sports, or the decision as to whether a medal will be awarded in the mixed event in addition to the competitions for women or men only.
Heyball, a very popular variant of Pool Billiards in China, will be a completely new medal event on the programme. There will also be dragon boat races with different team sizes and distances.
Sebastian Garvens, Sports Director of the IWGA, says about the talks with the host city and the international federations on the subject of medal events: "Following the first Competition Managers Meeting and venue inspections in late October, a few discussions were necessary and some adjustments were made, because there are specifications for the quota of participants per sport. Of course, our counterparts in China also expressed their wishes as to which competitions they would like to have in the programme, in line with the IWGA Strategy Paper. They expect a large audience interest for traditional, popular Chinese sports events."
It was crucial that the deadline was met, of presenting a complete competition roster by the end of the year. Around 90 per cent of the qualifying competitions will take place in 2024.
The decisions that have now been made clear the way for the next task. Sebastian Garvens: "We have also been working on a draft competition schedule, allocating the sports and disciplines to individual competition days. The international federations have certain requirements here as well, and the hosts want to see their competition venues used in a sustainable way. The IWGA wants to organise the Games in line with our values: excellence, sustainability and inclusiveness. This means that stadiums or domes may be shared between different sports. When drawing up the schedule, the requirements for TV production and the marketing of the output must also be taken into account."
The IWGA Sports Director expects to be able to present an initial provisional schedule at the next IWGA Annual General Meeting, on 1st May 2024.
The World Games 2025 medal events
The World Games is a multi-sport event staged every four years by the International World Games Association, organised with the support of the International Olympic Committee. The World Games 2022 was held in Birmingham, Alabama, USA, 7-17 July 2022. 3,600 athletes from 34 sports and 100 countries took part in the Games. The 12th edition of The World Games will be held in Chengdu, CHN, 7-17 August 2025.
