Bandy World Championship
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Most recent season or competition: 2016 Bandy World Championship |
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| Sport | Bandy |
|---|---|
| Inaugural season | 1957 |
| No. of teams | 18 (last tournament, 2016) |
| Countries | world |
| Most recent champion(s) |
 Russia (10th title 2016) |
| Most titles |
 Soviet Union (14 titles) |
| Official website | worldbandy.com |
The Bandy World Championship is a competition between bandy-playing nations. The tournament is administrated by the Federation of International Bandy. It is distinct from the Bandy World Cup, a club competition.
Although bandy has been played since the 19th century, the first men's world championships were only played in 1957, and the first women's ones were only in 2004. A bandy tournament was held as a demonstration sport at the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo, but this had no world championship status. A four nation tournament in 1954 was played in Moscow, this was the first time the Soviet Union met teams from other countries and the first time the new, jointly agreed rules were used, but this wasn't called a world championship. The international federation was founded in 1955 by the four countries which had played in Moscow.
The first ever Bandy World Championship was organised in 1957 in association with the 50th anniversary of the Ball Association of Finland, which at the time was the governing body of bandy in Finland. It was played at the Helsinki Olympic Stadium.
From 1961-2003, the men's championships were played every two years, but has since then been played annually.
For a long time, only four countries competed in the world championships: the Soviet Union, Sweden, Finland and Norway, with the Soviet Union as the dominating country. Since then, more countries have joined the tournaments, starting with the United States in 1985. The interest for the sport has spread to other parts of Europe, North America and Asia, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 also opened the way for separate national teams from the former states of that union. Somalia became the first team from Africa to compete, in the 2014 tournament in Irkutsk. The record number of participants are 18, set in 2016.
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