Three cities have submitted an official bid for the 11th edition of The World Games 2021. Birmingham (USA), Lima (Peru) and Ufa (Russia) applied to the International World Games Association (IWGA) before the expiry of the bidding phase on 31 July 2013 and are therefore eligible to host the multi-sport event in 2021.

The announcement of the The World Games 2021 host city will be made at a press conference after the final round of presentations at the beginning of 2015. The contract with the future Host City will be ratified and signed at the 2015 IWGA Annual General Meeting in the spring.  The IWGA Evaluation Committee will now analyse the bids. After going through the documents submitted by the applicant cities, the committee will announce a short list of candidate host cities and visit those potential hosts to conduct on-site evaluation. The process will conclude with the selection of those Candidate Cities to be invited for a final presentation to the IWGA Board.

TWG2021Bidding
IWGA President José Perurena feels strongly that his impression that the multi-sport event – staged every four years since 1981 – is gaining more and more interest has been confirmed. ”We are looking forward to seeing how the applicant cities present themselves.” José Perurena estimates that the costs of staging The World Games – which use existing infrastructure – are more than compensated by the new opportunities that being host of the multi-sport event offers to a city.

The World Games showcase more than 30 sports, such as Dance Sport, Squash, Tug of War, Sumo, Beach Handball and Water Ski. Approximately 4,500 athletes and officials from about 100 countries take part in The World Games. The athletes compete for gold medals in approximately 180 disciplines during the event. With Wroclaw in Poland as the current Host City, the 2017 Games will be staged once again in Europe. After Duisburg/Germany hosted the 2005 Games, the event moved to Asia and South America in 2009 and 2013 respectively.
Muaythai has already been included into the official sports programme of the 2017 Games.