China and Spain take on major badminton hosting duties

China and Spain will be doing the heavy lifting as the BWF announced hosts for 18 of their major events from 2019 to 2025.

The Badminton World Federation (BWF) yesterday announced hosts for 18 Major Events across the next seven years.  11 Member Associations from four continents were awarded hosting responsibilities with China getting the nod for 4 more events, in addition to the 2019 Sudirman Cup they had already been awarded last year.

“This is an unprecedented decision for BWF where we are announcing 18 of our Major Event country hosts as far forward as 2025,” Høyer was quoted as saying in the BWF press release.  “It allows all of our hosts to work closely with BWF to ensure the staging of world-class tournaments as we continue to grow the sport globally.

“We were lucky to receive some outstanding bids, all with the same forward-thinking vision as us. Following an exhaustive assessment period, we were able to determine the host cities and countries that best represented the interests of the sport.”

The BWF press release said that all bids will now go into a second and final phase of evaluation where the last details of the bids will be clarified before contractual finalisation.  This last process will involve confirmation and announcement of the hosting city in some cases.

After China, it is Spain that will be doing extra duty, hosting both the World Championships and the World Seniors in 2021 and then the World Juniors the following year.  The 2021 Worlds will be the third time for Spain to host that event, after it was held in Seville in 2001 and Madrid in 2006.  Denmark and New Zealand each won bids for two events.

Many of the cities will be hosting a major badminton event for the first time but Russia is the only one of the countries chosen that has not hosted at least one of the five different events in the past.  They will take on hosting duties as early as next year, for the World Junior Championships.

Korea will host the World Senior Championships in 2023, their first BWF major event since the 2006 World Juniors.  Interestingly, this is the only one of the five events at which Korea has never won a title and Korea is still the only country to have won a Sudirman, Uber, Thomas Cup or World individual title while having never hosted one of those events.

As the World Seniors and the team events are all biennial and the World Championships are not held in Olympic years, the World Juniors are the only event that will take place in all 7 years.  However, host nations have yet to be named for 2024 and 2025.

Below are the hosts announced by the BWF (subject to finalisation):

2019
World Championships:  Basel, Switzerland (previously announced)
Sudirman Cup:  Nanning, China (previously announced)
World Senior Championships:  Katowice, Poland (previously announced)
World Junior Championships:  Kazan, Russia

2020
Thomas & Uber Cups:  Aarhus, Denmark
World Junior Championships:  Auckland, New Zealand

2021
World Championships:  Spain (city to be confirmed)
Sudirman Cup:  China (city to be confirmed)
World Junior Championships:  China (city to be confirmed)
World Senior Championships:  Spain (city to be confirmed)

2022
World Championships:  Tokyo, Japan
Thomas & Uber Cups:  Bangkok, Thailand
World Junior Championships: Spain (city to be confirmed)

2023
World Championships:  Copenhagen, Denmark
Sudirman Cup:  New Delhi, India
World Junior Championships:  Honolulu, USA
World Senior Championships:  Seoul, Korea

2024
Thomas & Uber Cups:  China (city to be confirmed)

2025
World Championships:  Paris, France
Sudirman Cup:  China (city to be confirmed)
World Senior Championships:   Auckland, New Zealand