The BWF World Championships is a badminton tournament sanctioned by Badminton World Federation. The tournament offers the most ranking points, together with Summer Olympics badminton tournaments. The winners will be crowned as the "World Champions" and awarded gold medals. However, it does not offer any prize money. The tournament started in 1977 and was held once every three years until 1983. However, the IBF faced difficulty in hosting the first two events as the World Badminton Federation hosted the same tournament a year after the IBF World Championships with the same goals. Started 1985, the tournament became biennial and played once every two years until 2005. Starting 2006, the tournament was changed to an annual event on the BWF calendar with the goal to give more chances for the players to be crowned as official "World Champions". However, the tournament is not held every Summer Olympics years.
The table below gives an overview of all host cities and countries of the World Championships. The most recent games were held in Basel. The number in parentheses following the city/country denotes how many times that city/country has hosted the championships. From 1989 to 2001 the world championships were held immediately after the Sudirman Cup at the same location.
Past winners
So far, only 20 countries have achieved at least a bronze medal in the tournament: ten in Asia, eight in Europe, one in North America and one in Oceania. Africa is the only confederation that has not won a medal. At the age of 18, Ratchanok Inthanon became the youngest winner of a singles title at the Championships. Ratchanok was less than 3 months older than Jang Hye-ock was when she won the women's doubles title at the 1995 Championships.
Most successful players & national teams
Most successful players
Several players have won gold medals in more than one category in a World Championship; this includes:
Zhao Yunlei, 2014 & 2015, women's doubles and mixed doubles
From 1977 up to 2001, the medals were usually divided among five countries, namely China, Korea, Denmark, Indonesia, Malaysia. However, in 2003, the winners included seven countries and in 2005 the medal board contained a record high of ten countries. Tony Gunawan also bears the distinction of winning a gold medal in Men's Doubles, representing two countries, 2001 partnering with Halim Haryanto for Indonesia and in 2005 partnering with Howard Bach to give the United States its first medal in the competition. The 2005 edition also brought new faces in the mixed doubles event which had been dominated by China and Korea since 1997. With the retirement of defending champions and two time winners Kim Dong-moon/Ra Kyung-min, Nova Widianto/Liliyana Natsir won Indonesia's first mixed doubles gold since 1980 when Christian Hadinata/Imelda Wiguna won it last for Indonesia. Below is the list of the most successful players ever, with 3 or more gold medals.
Rank
Player
MS
WS
MD
WD
XD
Total
1
Lin Dan
5
5
1
Park Joo-bong
2
3
5
1
Zhao Yunlei
2
3
5
4
Cai Yun
4
4
4
Fu Haifeng
4
4
4
Gao Ling
3
1
4
4
Hendra Setiawan
4
4
4
Liliyana Natsir
4
4
4
Zhang Nan
1
3
4
10
Carolina Marín
3
3
10
Ge Fei
2
1
3
10
Guan Weizhen
3
3
10
Han Aiping
2
1
3
10
Huang Sui
3
3
10
Kim Dong-moon
1
2
3
10
Li Lingwei
2
1
3
10
Lin Ying
3
3
10
Mohammad Ahsan
3
3
10
Yu Yang
3
3
Below is the list of the most successful player in each category :
Below is the gold medalists shown based by category and countries after the 2019 Championships. China has been the most successful in the World Championships ever since its inception in 1977. They were the only country ever to achieve a shutout of the medals which they did in 1987, 2010 and 2011.
Rank
Nation
77
80
83
85
87
89
91
93
95
97
99
01
03
05
06
07
09
10
11
13
14
15
17
18
19
Total
1
2
3
5
4
3
1
1
3
2
3
3
2
4
3
4
5
5
2
3
3
2
2
1
66
2
1
4
1
3
2
1
2
2
2
2
1
1
1
23
3
3
1
0.5
1
1
1
1
1
1
10.5
4
2
1
2
1
2
1
1
10
5
1
1
2
2
6
6
1
1
1
3
7
1
0.5
1
2.5
8
1
1
8
0.5
0.5
1
8
1
1
8
1
1
BOLD means overall winner of that World Championships
Men's singles
Rank
Nation
77
80
83
85
87
89
91
93
95
97
99
01
03
05
06
07
09
10
11
13
14
15
17
18
19
Total
1
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
14
2
X
X
X
X
X
X
6
3
X
X
X
3
4
X
X
2
Women's singles
Rank
Nation
77
80
83
85
87
89
91
93
95
97
99
01
03
05
06
07
09
10
11
13
14
15
17
18
19
Total
1
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
15
2
X
X
X
3
3
X
X
2
3
X
X
2
5
X
1
5
X
1
5
X
1
Men's doubles
Rank
Nation
77
80
83
85
87
89
91
93
95
97
99
01
03
05
06
07
09
10
11
13
14
15
17
18
19
Total
1
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
10
2
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
8
3
X
X
X
X
4
4
X
X
2
5
X
1
Women's doubles
Rank
Nation
77
80
83
85
87
89
91
93
95
97
99
01
03
05
06
07
09
10
11
13
14
15
17
18
19
Total
1
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
20
2
X
X
X
3
3
X
1
3
X
1
Mixed doubles
Rank
Nation
77
80
83
85
87
89
91
93
95
97
99
01
03
05
06
07
09
10
11
13
14
15
17
18
19
Total
1
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
9
2
X
X
X
X
X
5
2
X
X
X
X
X
5
4
X
/
X
X
3.5
5
/
X
1.5
5
\
\
1
Medal table
Updated after XXV edition, does not include one stripped silver medal from 2014
Medal distribution
Men's singles
Note that due to a disqualification on suspicion of violation of anti-doping regulations, the 2014 silver medalist, Lee Chong Wei was stripped of his medal and thus the medal count doesn't add up.
Lin Dan
Park Joo-bong
Hendra Setiawan
Carolina Marín