Szeged Awarded 2027 Olympic Qualification Competition

The southeastern Hungarian city of Szeged will stage the 2027 World Canoe Sprint and Para Championships ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

The decision was made by the governing body of the International Canoe Federation (ICF), the board, at its meeting in Budapest, and announced by the organization’s president, Thomas Konietzko.

"We are very happy that we succeeded and that we can bring another prestigious competition to Szeged," the federation's statement quoted the executive director of the Hungarian Canoe Federation MKKSZ, Bálint Szakács, as saying. "We have worked hard on the competition, as we feel it is important for our athletes to win their quotas in front of a full house on home soil ahead of the Los Angeles Olympics. It is also an important success from a competition point of view, as the last qualification World Championships were held in Szeged in 2019 and we want to organize an event that is at least as good as that was."

Bálint Szakács added that in the past 25 years they have gained a lot of experience in organizing competitions, hosting some kind of international event almost every year. The ICF board also decided on several other future venues, so that in 2025 there will be another World Cup in Szeged.

Szeged, which has competed with Racice in the Czech Republic and Plovdiv in Bulgaria for the right to host the event, has already hosted qualification World Championships in 2011 and 2019, and will host the event for the fifth time in total (1998, 2006, 2011, 2019, 2027).