Current season, competition or edition: 2017 BWF World Championships |
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Sport | Badminton |
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Founded | 1977 |
Country | BWF member nations |
The BWF World Championships (formerly known as IBF World Championships, also known as the World Badminton Championships) is a badminton tournament sanctioned by Badminton World Federation (BWF). The tournament offers the most ranking points, together with Summer Olympic Games. The winners will be crowned as the "World Champions" and awarded gold medals. However, it does not offer any prize money.
The tournament started in 1977 and was held once every three years until 1983. However, the IBF faced difficulty in hosting the first two events as the World Badminton Federation (which later merged with the IBF to form one badminton federation) hosted the same tournament a year after the IBF World Championships with the same goals. Started 1985, the tournament became bi-annual and played once every two years until 2005. Starting 2006, the tournament was changed to an annual event on the BWF calendar with the goal to give more chances for the players to be crowned as official "World Champions". However, the tournament will not be held once every four years to give way to the Summer Olympic Games.
The table below gives an overview of all host cities and countries of the World Championships. The most recent games were held in Jakarta. The number in parentheses following the city/country denotes how many times that city/country has hosted the championships. From 1989 to 2001 the world championships were held immediately after the Sudirman Cup at the same location.
So far, only 20 countries have achieved at least a bronze medal in the tournament: ten in Asia, eight in Europe, one in North America and one in Oceania. Africa is the only continent that has not won a medal.