Qualifying for the 2026 Kujawy Pomorze World Athletics Indoor Championships was announced by the global governing body.
Fifty per cent of athletes will qualify by achieving entry standards, the other half by global ranking.
All performances must be recorded within the qualification period starting on November 1, 2025, and ending on March 8, 2026.
Standards
Member nations that do not have a qualified athlete in any event may enter one athlete, with the exception of the 800 metres.
The World Athletics Indoor Championships are a biennial indoor track and field competition, which serves as the global championship. Organized by the World Athletics, the competition was inaugurated as the World Indoor Games in 1985 in Paris, France and was subsequently renamed to IAAF World Indoor Championships in 1987. The current name was adapted with the name change of the sports governing body in 2019 to World Athletics.
Interestingly, while World Athletics has changed the name of indoor records to “short track,” the competition continues to be referred to as “indoors.”
The competition typically goes every other year; however, there were back-to-back editions in 2003 and 2004 and a four-year gap during COVID from 2018 to 2022. The most recent edition was in 2025 in Nanjing, China. So, again, there is no gap to the 2026 meet.
Top-10 medal winners
| Rank | Nation | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  United States | 125 | 95 | 84 | 304 |
| 2 |  Russia | 52 | 48 | 45 | 145 |
| 3 |  Ethiopia | 35 | 17 | 16 | 68 |
| 4 |  Great Britain | 24 | 36 | 35 | 95 |
| 5 |  Cuba | 19 | 18 | 17 | 54 |
| 6 | Soviet Union | 19 | 17 | 17 | 53 |
| 7 |  Jamaica | 18 | 25 | 18 | 61 |
| 8 |  France | 17 | 15 | 22 | 54 |
| 9 |  Germany | 14 | 23 | 22 | 59 |
| 10 |  Sweden | 14 | 10 | 9 | 33 |
Note the Soviet Union and Russia combined for a total of 198 medals. Russia has been banned since 2012 for systematic doping and for its war in Ukraine.
East Germany is ranked 11th, followed by Canada and Kenya in 12th and 13th, respectively. The combined East and West Germany would rank their 83 medals as third overall. Again, East Germany was known for systematic doping.
Kujawy Pomorze is a small city located in the north of Poland, 290 km north-west of Warsaw.
