Bilbao, Official Venue of the 2016 World Junior Badminton Championships

The international competition will be held at Bilbao Arena in autumn 2016 and will bring together over 300 participants from 40 countries

The formal nomination, ratified by the Badminton World Federation, was announced in the Chinese city of Dongguan today

This announcement endorses the commitment of Bilbao City Council, Bizkaia Provincial Council and the Basque Government to attract sport events as a driving force for momentum and the economy

Bilbao, 14 May 2015.  Bilbao was announced today, in the Chinese city of Dongguan, as the official venue of the 2016 World Junior Badminton Championship.  The competition will be held in Bilbao Arena in October and November next year. This announcement endorses the commitment of Bilbao City Council, Bizkaia Provincial Council and the Basque Government to attract major sport events as a driving force for momentum and the economy in the city, the territory and the Basque Country. This event also further confirms the Basque Country as an attractive venue to host international sport events, which has already hosted the 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup and will host the 2015 Atlantic Games in Orio-Zarautz, the 2015 European Golden Oldies Rugby Festival in San Sebastián, the Tug of War World Championship Outdoor 2020 and will be one of the venues for UEFA EURO 2020.

Bilbao was vying to stage the event against the city of Jakarta, in Indonesia, which is the leading badminton country worldwide and the sport's federation there has 325,000 members. The Bilbao bid, considered to be “the most suitable” to host the championship by the Badminton World Federation, had the backing of the Basque, Spanish and European Badminton Federations, the Spanish Olympic Committee and the Spanish Sports Council.

A high flying competition

Badminton has 24 million federation licences and over 200 million players around the world, and is one of the sports with the greatest number of fans in countries such as China, Indonesia, Japan and France. The 2016 World Junior Championship will bring together a total of 300 participants from 40 countries from the five continents and will attract a large number of fans to Bilbao.