Ultimate World Athletics Championship Kicks Off in Budapest with Star Performances

The 2026 athletics season reaches its climax this weekend with an entirely new kind of competition. The inaugural edition of the Ultimate World Athletics Championship, a new event launched by World Athletics to bring together the world's best athletes for a short and intense contest, kicked off on Friday evening in Budapest.

The concept is simple: instead of another major championship lasting nine or ten days with hundreds of events and preliminary rounds, the Ultimate World Championship is designed as a champion-of-champions event. Olympic champions, world champions, Diamond League winners, and top-ranked athletes converge for just three evenings, featuring almost exclusively semifinals and finals. A total of 381 athletes from 65 federations registered for the inaugural edition, competing for a record prize pool of $10 million—the largest ever in a single athletics competition.

Many big names showed up, but the biggest of all was Mondo Duplantis, who naturally won the pole vault competition with a clearance of 6.20 meters—well shy of his world record (6.31). Greece's Emmanouil Karalis finished second with 6.15 meters.

Jakob Ingebrigtsen, the undisputed ruler of the 5,000 meters, finished first and posted a world-leading time for the year of 12:59.24 minutes, ahead of American Cole Hocker, who took second in 13:00.05.

American Masai Russell, who has not lost a single race this season, won the 100-meter hurdles in 12.22 seconds, beating Nigeria's Tobi Amusan (12.34).

In the men's hurdles, another American triumphed: Cordell Tinch (recorded as Jacoba Tharpe in translation), who stopped the clock at 12.94 seconds.

World and Olympic champion Yaroslava Mahuchikh delivered in the high jump, claiming gold with a leap of 1.99 meters.