The BWF World Championships is a badminton tournament organized by the Badminton World Federation.[1] It's the most prestigious badminton competition, offering the most ranking points, along with the Summer Olympics badminton events introduced in 1992.[2] The winners of the tournament are World Champions of the sport and are awarded a gold medal.[3]
The tournament started in 1977 and was held once every three years until 1983. However, the International Badminton Federation 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.
Since 1985, the tournament became biennial and played once every two years until 2005. Starting 2006, the tournament was changed to an annual event on the BWF calendar. The tournament is not held during the Summer Olympics years to avoid schedule conflicts.
The table below gives an overview of all host cities and countries of the World Championships. The most recent games were held in Copenhagen. 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.
As of 2025, only 22 countries have achieved at least a bronze medal in the tournament: 11 from Asia, eight from Europe, two from North America and one from Oceania. Africa is the only confederation that has not won a medal. Canada is the newest country to won a medal in 2025.
At the age of 18, Ratchanok Inthanon became the youngest winner of a singles title at the Championships.[4] Ratchanok was less than 3 months older than Jang Hye-ock was when she won the women's doubles title at the 1995 Championships.[5]
Most successful players
Several players have won gold medals in more than one category in a World Championship; this includes:
Lene Køppen, 1977, mixed doubles and women's singles
Zhao Yunlei, 2014 & 2015, women's doubles and mixed doubles
Seo Seung-jae, 2023, men's doubles and mixed doubles
From 1977 up to 2001, the medals were usually divided among five countries, namely China, Korea, Denmark, Indonesia, Malaysia. However, in 2003, the winners included seven countries and in 2005 and 2025 the medal board contained a record high of ten countries.
Tony Gunawan also bears the distinction of winning a gold medal in Men's Doubles, representing two countries, 2001 partnering with Halim Haryanto for Indonesia and in 2005 partnering with Howard Bach to give the United States its first medal in the competition.
The 2005 edition also brought new faces to the mixed doubles event which had been dominated by China and Korea since 1997. With the retirement of defending champions and two-time winners Kim Dong-moon/Ra Kyung-min (Korea), Nova Widianto/Liliyana Natsir won Indonesia's first mixed doubles gold since 1980 when Christian Hadinata/Imelda Wiguna won it last for Indonesia.
Below is the list of the most successful players ever, with 3 or more gold medals.
Below is the gold medalists shown based by category and countries after the 2023 BWF World Championships. China has been the most successful in the World Championships ever since its inception in 1977. They were the only country ever to achieve a shutout of the medals which they did in 1987, 2010 and 2011.
BOLD means overall winner of that World Championships
Due to the disqualification on suspicion of violation of anti-doping regulations, the 2014 silver medalist Lee Chong Wei was stripped of his medal and thus the medal count does not add up.[6]
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2025 BWF World Championships 
