Full cycle of events planned for the upcoming year
The World Flying Disc Federation (WFDF) board of Directors are pleased to announce that a full calendar of WFDF World Championship flying disc events has been scheduled to take place in 2024.
WFDF President Robert “Nob” Rauch, commented “WFDF is working hard to return to pre-pandemic lead times for planning and announcing dates and hosts for our flying disc championships. Attendance has started to return to pre-2020levels and with player levels at our national federations resuming their growth trajectories we expect our 2024 events to be well attended. WFDF is currently calling for bids for 2025 events which will extend our lead times, giving NF’s and athletes more time to prepare. We are excited to return to experienced Local Organizing Committees for many of the events on next year’s calendar.”
Ultimate & Guts Events
Junior Under-20 players will take to the field again in 2024 at the bi-annual event which most recently took place in 2022 in Poland. The WFDF World Junior Ultimate Championships(WJUC) is scheduled to take place in Birmingham UK over 8 days from Saturday 20th July – Saturday 27th July inclusive. Hosts will be UK Ultimate lead by Si Hill and his experienced team and the event will feature Open, Women’s and Mixed Under-20 divisions.
As previously announced, the WFDF World Ultimate Championships (WUC) and World Guts Championships(WGC) will run concurrently on the Gold Coast from Saturday 31st August – Saturday 7th September 2024 in Australia. Bids have already been allocated to 37 countries with approximately 100 teams attending both events. A wait-list for countries who didn’t meet the original application deadline has been established and WFDF is still accepting pre-registration applications. Guts will feature a separate women’s division for the first time.
USA will host the inaugural WFDF World Masters Ultimate Championships (WMUC) for national teams of players over 30 for female and over 33 years of age for male players. All masters divisions (Masters, Grand Master, and Great Grand Masters) will be offered for countries to pre-register teams. This event is the inaugural event for Masters National teams after two very successful stand-alone Masters Club Championships hosted in Canada in 2018 and Ireland in 2022. The decision to pull masters divisions to separate events was made after the WUGC event in 2016 became too large. The event will take place in Irvine, California from Saturday 9th – Saturday 16th November 2024. The Local Organizing Committee (LOC) is USAU’s state based organization California Ultimate, which is also acting as the LOC for WFDF’s 2023 World Beach Ultimate Championships to be hosted later this year in late fall at Huntington Beach.
Disc Golf
The WFDF 2024 World Team Disc Golf Championshipwill be hosted in Australia in Mundaring, a 35 minute drive east of central Perth. Tournament Directors Ken and Sue Summers have put a lot of planning together and are excited to open registrations next month for the event that will be held over four days from 6th – 9th of November 2024. The International World Games Association (IWGA) recently announced that Disc Golf will be returning to the World Games to be hosted in Chengdu, China in 2025, which is testament to the large growth of Disc Golf around the world and the number of countries participating at WTDGC 2024 in Mundaring looking to qualify is expected to be large.
Beach Ultimate
WFDF Beach Ultimate Committee has made a structural change to the cycle of beach events, moving their continental events from odd to even years in attempts to alleviate stresses on players who normally attend both grass and beach continental events. These will now be held in alternate years.
After successfully hosting the inaugural Asia Oceanic Beach Ultimate Championships (AOBUC) in Japan in 2019 before the pandemic, WFDF’s member Japan Flying Disc Association has again won the bid to host the 2024 event. AOBUC will be hosted on the beaches of Shirahama and Tanabe in the Wakayama Province from Wednesday 12th – Sunday 16th June 2024. The Beaches both located on the Pacific Ocean, are the perfect backdrop to staging this event with experienced Tournament Director Amane Asai with support from the JFDA team.
After calling to bid, WFDF’s PanAm continental association indicated that it is still too early to ask members in the region to find teams to compete at PanAmerican Beach Ultimate Championships (PABUC) for next year. Therefore, no WFDF continental beach ultimate event is planned for the region for 2024 for national teams. WFDF encourages countries in the region to continue to send teams to the WFDF World Beach Ultimate Championships as they grow Beach Ultimate locally within the region.
At congress this past summer, WFDF announced that the European Beach Ultimate Championships (EBUC) would be hosted in France. Unfortunately, for reasons outside the control of the LOC and WFDF, the event will not be able to be run due to issues with the venue. As a result, WFDF is working with other countries in attempts to still hold the event and to find a new host and dates for the event. European countries that are prepared to arrange and host the event next year should reach out immediately to the WFDF events team for further talks. More information will be shared as soon as a new date and host has been established.
WFDF will work with LOC’s to release information bulletins for next year’s events if not already released. Pre-Registrations and bid allocations will follow shortly thereafter. Information will be shared per the normal channels of emails to the key representatives for each member NF as well as on our social media sites.