FINA has determined the dates of the 21st World Championships, which will be held in Doha (Qatar).
The Championships will take place from 2 to 18 February 2024, following a decision by FINA and the Doha 2024 Local Organising Committee, FINA announced today.
The Championships in Doha were originally scheduled for the summer of 2023. However, after a double postponement of the 20th FINA World Championships in Fukuoka, the WCH in Qatar had to be rescheduled.
The 20th World Championships in Fukuoka were moved from 2021 to 2022 after the postponement of the Olympic Games. A few months ago, FINA decided to reschedule the Fukuoka Championships once more. The new dates for the 20th World Championships are 14 – 30 July 2023.
So, three FINA World Championships in all disciplines will be held in a span of 19 months. The series started with the 19th Championships in Budapest last month.
The water polo tournament in Doha will be held in the Aspire Dome, with the venue transforming from the world’s largest indoor multi-sport arena into the world’s largest indoor aquatics venue, FINA announced. Swimming and artistic swimming competitions will be held in the same venue.
The Doha Championships will be a water polo qualification tournament for the 2024 Olympic Games. Four teams (two male and two female) will qualify for the Paris Games from Doha.
Now, LEN has to make a move and decide on the dates of the 2024 European Water Polo Championships. The host of the 36th European Championships that will be held in two years will be Tel Aviv (Israel). In the previous ten years, the European Water Polo Championships in the Olympic year (2012,2016, 2020) were held in winter (in January). The Championships in 2016 and 2020 served as qualifying tournaments for the Olympic Games (one male and one female team earned their Olympic berths at both of the Championships), and because of that, they had to be played before the Olympics.
Europe has one guaranteed berth for both water polo tournaments in Paris. We’ll see if the 2024 Tel Aviv Championship will be the European Olympic Qualification tournament (as it was in 2016 and 2020).
The Intercontinental Olympic Qualification Tournament will also take place in 2024.
Anyway, the 2024 water polo calendar will be fully packed, just as it is this year.
The Olympic Games in Paris will take place from 26 July to 11 August 2024.
