Russian Officials Say 2025 World Champs Move a “Postponement,” Not Cancellation

After Russia failed to mention in its initial release that the 2025 World Aquatics Championships were being moved from Kazan, Russia, to Singapore, Russian government officials say the 2025 World Swimming Championships have been postponed to 2029 and not cancelled.

Vladimir SalnikovThe president of the All-Russian Swimming Federation told Russian state media TASS that the two parties are discussing postponing the 2025 World Championships in Kazan to 2029.

“The question of postponing the tournament has already been discussed,” he said. “Now there is a proposal to postpone the World Swimming Championships in Kazan to 2029.”

Vladimir Leonovthe Sports Minister of Tatarstan (where Kazan is the capital) was more explicit and said that the meeting was already scheduled.

“We maintain a dialogue with the international association,” said Leonov. “The World Swimming Championships in Kazan have not been cancelled, they have been postponed to 2029.”

World Aquatics took the middle ground, saying that “no decisions have been made about who will host the event in 2029.”

“Yesterday’s announcement relates only to the World Aquatics Championships – Singapore 2025,” he continued.

World Aquatics (formerly FINA) has continued to walk a fine line with one of its most prominent international sporting partners. The organization was one of the last to ban Russian and Belarusian athletes from international sports competitions in the spring of 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and one of the last to remove its global sporting events from Russia.

Ultimately, World Aquatics drew against Russia, although the decision was made on soft ground – Russian and Belarusian athletes were “not invited” to the Summer World Swimming Championships. No statement was ever released on December’s World Short Track Championships, but neither Russian nor Belarusian athletes took part.

World Aquatics’ most recent statement was that they have “no news” about the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes in World Aquatics competitions, but they have so far refused to elaborate on exactly what that means.

Kazan has become a regular host of major water sports events since the construction of the Water Sports Palace for the 2013 World University Games. Since then, the city has hosted the 2015 World Swimming Championships and several smaller World Swimming Championships and World Series/World Cup events over the past decade.

They were set to host both the 2022 World Junior Swimming Championships and the World Short Course Swimming Championships before both events were removed from the country.

If the Kazan World Championships are indeed postponed and not cancelled, it would be the third World Swimming Championships (and fourth World Championship meeting overall) to be postponed this decade amid global challenges such as war and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Singapore is set to be the last of three consecutive World Aquatics Championships to be held in Asia: 2023 in Fukuoka, 2024 in Doha and 2025 in Singapore.