Nairobi’s hosting of the 2029 World Athletics Championships, a first for any African nation, will mark the third successive World Championships held outside Europe after Tokyo’s staging of the 2025 championships and with Beijing due to host next year’s instalment.
Announcing Nairobi’s successful bid, World Athletics president Sebastian Coe defended the choice of the Kenyan capital ahead of rival candidates London and Rome. Munich, which was also in the running for the 2029 champions, was awarded the 2031 meet.
The decision comes against the backdrop of Kenya’s dismal doping record over the last decade, with over 300 of the county’s athletes banned since Coe set up the Athletics Integrity Unit in 2017. Three more Kenyans have been banned since the start of this month, meaning 136 of their athletes are currently serving lengthy or lifetime bans, more than any other country.
Nairobi will also present a challenging location for distance runners, given the city sits 1,612 metres above sea-level. However, the altitude can benefit sprint and field events.
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Nairobi previously bid for the 2025 World Championships, losing out to Tokyo. London had been seeking to host a second World Championships since 2017, this time as a joint venture between UK Athletics, London Marathon Events and the Great Run Company. There had been disputes with West Ham United over the use of its home ground, London Stadium, for the nine-day event but an agreement was subsequently reached.
“Europe is a heartland, and we openly accept that,” said Coe. “It is in large part the breadbasket of our sport, but we do also have a responsibility to make sure that an international governing federation made up of well over 200 federations has the opportunity to be able to take our championships into areas that strategically we think will actually grow the footprint of our sport.
“Those decisions are never easy decisions, and in a way, that’s exemplified in the four compelling, outstanding bids that we’ve had. I don’t think the council has ever been given more information or a more detailed process behind the evaluation of four bids, and you can’t take any one of those metrics in isolation.
“What I can tell you is that, yes, of course, we see the historical, ground-breaking nature of taking the World Athletics Championships to Africa, but that alone is not the basis upon the decision. It was made across budgets, it was made across financial government guarantees, it was made across the growth potential of the sport.”
Poor attendances during the opening days of the European Championships in Birmingham last month is not understood to have come against London’s bid. Coe added the World Athletics Council, comprised of 26 members, had to consider all 214 member federations when coming to their decision.
“Nairobi and Munich ultimately presented two compelling propositions,” said Coe. “I’m not going to maintain a running commentary on some of the judgment and the basis of those judgments. We will, of course, be sitting down with all the bidding cities. And remember, in the past we have had bidding cities that had been unsuccessful that have come back into the frame and understood and grasped, as Nairobi has, the challenges of putting forward another bid.”
Nairobi previously staged the World Under-18 Championships in 2017, and the World Under-20 Championships in 2021. The 48,000-capacity Kasarani Stadium, where the 2029 championships are set to be held, is currently being renovated ahead of the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations.
Coe has resisted calls to impose an outright ban on Kenya, the punishment handed down to Russia, given its deep-rooted doping problem. Last year, Kenya’s women’s marathon world record holder Ruth Chepngetich was banned after returning a positive test for hydrochlorothiazide (HCTZ), a banned diuretic widely used as a masking agent.
Next year’s World Championships in Beijing will take place over 10 days, from September 10th to 19th, with Nairobi 2029 and Munich 2031 also set for September, in line with the objective for the athletics season to end with a major global championship.
