World Rowing Championships

The World Rowing Championship is a week-long, international rowing event which has become of great importance for the international rowing community – the biggest regatta of the year outside the Olympic Games. Racing is over 2000m, and there are eight different boat styles: single sculls, double sculls, coxless pairs, coxed pairs, quad sculls, coxless fours, coxed fours and eights. Split by gender, and in some cases by weight, these make up around 21 boat classes.

sweep rowers

Sculling refers to a rower using an oar in each hand to propel the boat forward. Coxless requires rowers to propel and steer their boat using a single oar per rower. Coxed requires rowers to propel their boat with a single oar and a coxswain, i.e. the person who steers the boat, sitting in the back.

For a team to compete in this event you must be a member of a rowing federation and a citizen of that country. There are rigid regulations controlling this event.

Para-rowing classes have been part of the championships since 2002 and are now raced alongside the able-bodied events. In Olympic years the programme changes shape: the Olympic and Paralympic classes are left out altogether so that crews can concentrate on the Games, and only the non-Olympic classes race at the Worlds, usually alongside the under-23 and under-19 championships.

Recent championships have been held at Račice in the Czech Republic (2022), Belgrade (2023), St Catharines in Canada (2024) and Shanghai (2025), where 672 rowers from 56 nations raced at Dianshan Lake. In 2027 the regatta returns to Lucerne, where it all started.

2026 World Rowing Championships

The 2026 championships were held at the Bosbaan in Amsterdam from 24 to 30 August, the third time the Dutch course has staged the event after 1977 and 2014. Twenty-three titles were decided, across the Olympic boat classes, the lightweight and other non-Olympic boats, and five para-rowing events.

The host nation finished top of the table with four gold medals and ten in total, more than any other country. Germany, the United States and Romania each won three titles, and Great Britain two. The leading five nations were:

The Netherlands took the men's eight in front of a home crowd, holding off Great Britain by the narrowest of margins, and also won the women's quadruple sculls, the men's double sculls and the mixed double sculls.

Germany's Oliver Zeidler won a fourth world title in the men's single sculls, while Lauren Henry became the first British woman to win the women's single. Romania's Adriana Adam and Simona Radiș won the women's pair and were in the crew that took the women's eight. Ireland won the women's double sculls, New Zealand the men's pair, Italy the men's quadruple sculls, and the United States both the men's and the women's coxless fours.

Two smaller rowing nations had the week of their lives. Uzbekistan won the lightweight men's double sculls for the country's first world rowing title of any kind, and Mexico came away with two lightweight golds. In the para events the United States ended a long British winning run in the PR3 mixed coxed four, while Great Britain, Ukraine and Germany shared the remaining titles.

Trivia

• The championship was originally hosted in Lucerne, Switzerland, in 1962. It was held every 4 years until 1974 when it became an annual boating event.
• The 2018 World Rowing Championships, in Plovdiv, were the first world rowing championships where the competition schedule was gender-equal.
• The 2020 and the 2021 World Rowing Championships were canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
• The governing body was known as FISA (Fédération Internationale des Sociétés d'Aviron) until it adopted the name World Rowing in 2020. Founded in 1892, it is the oldest international sports federation of any sport.
• Uzbekistan won its first ever World Rowing Championships gold medal at Amsterdam in 2026, in the lightweight men's double sculls.
• The 2027 championships go back to Lucerne, 65 years after the first.