History & Host Cities of the FINA World Aquatics Championships

By Aglaia Pezzato on SwimSwam

This article originally appeared in the 2022 Spring edition of SwimSwam Magazine. Subscribe here.

The FINA World Championships are the World Championships for aquatics, a huge competition where athletes from all aquatic disciplines show their talent. The shape of today’s World Championships is very different from the event held almost 50 years ago.

The event was first held in 1973 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, with only 47 nations and four disciplines. Four disciplines, with two of them reserved for one gender. Water polo was for men only, and synchronized swimming, now artistic swimming, was only available for women. To see the women’s water polo tournament, we move to 1986, in Madrid. There, Australia won the gold and their first title in history; the Netherlands took the silver and USA the bronze medal.

The wait was longer to see a man in artistic swimming — it first happened in 2015, in Kazan, Russia. In the sixteenth edition of the event, for the first time the mixed pair (women’s-men’s) duets were included.

The eighteenth time the event took place, in Gwangju 2019, 192 nations participated in six disciplines: swimming, open water swimming, diving, high diving, water polo, and artistic swimming.

After the first attempt to unify all aquatic sports, the second edition of the FINA World Championships was hosted two years later in Cali, Colombia, in 1975.

From 1978 to 1998, the Championships were held every four years, in non-Olympic years. From 2001 until 2019, the Championships were held in odd years, every two years.

As you all already know, due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the scheduling of both the Olympic Games and the Championships between 2019 and 2025 became somewhat erratic, with World Championships not taking place in Japan in 2021 to accommodate the delayed 2020 Summer Olympics, and then delayed again to 2023 because of pandemic-related issues in Japan.

An extraordinary edition of the event was announced for 2022 in Budapest so as not to leave a four-year gap between World Championships. As a result, World Championships will be held in four consecutive years for the first time: 2022 in Hungary, 2023 in Japan (the original 2021 event, delayed twice), 2024 in Qatar (moved to 2024 from the original 2023 event, then moved again to the start of 2024 to accommodate the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics), and 2025 in Russia.

Considering only the Championships that have already taken place, nine editions were hosted by a European city. Three editions took place in Asia: 2001 (Japan), 2011 (China), and 2019 (South Korea), and three more editions took place in Australia.

The American continent has hosted this event three times, but not one of these was in the United States, despite the USA team winning the medal table 13 times. The first time a World Championships for aquatics will take place in Africa will be in Qatar 2024.

Among the editions of the FINA World Championships, some have a special place in swimming history. Fukuoka 2001, for example, where the 18-year-old Ian Thorpe showed the world his incredible talent. Rome 2009, the edition everyone remembers as the “supersuit edition” with 43 world records beaten. Budapest 2017, where the Duna Arena was the real champion of the entire week of races.

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