Norway will host the World Alpine Ski Championships for the first time in 2029. The competitions will take place in Narvik, a city with around 22,000 inhabitants. Delegates of the International Ski Federation (FIS) at the congress in Reykjavik chose between three candidates: Narvik, Soldeu in Andorra, and Val Gardena in Italy.
In the second round of voting, Val Gardena received more votes than Soldeu and will host the World Alpine Ski Championships in 2031. Although Norway has a long history of organizing world championships in Nordic disciplines, this is the first time it has been awarded the organization of the Alpine Ski World Championships.
“This is a huge day for Norwegian skiing,” said Tove Moe Dyrhaug, president of the Norwegian Ski Federation. “The FIS World Championship is one of the biggest sports events in the world, watched by millions around the globe.
Norway has long been recognized as a top alpine nation, and now we can finally host the World Championship,” added Dyrhaug. The 2025 World Championship will be held in Saalbach-Hinterglemm, Austria, and in 2027, the host will be Crans Montana, Switzerland.
Hostings were also awarded in other winter sports FIS also awarded the hostings of the World Championships in snowboarding, freestyle, and freeskiing in 2029 to Zhangjiakou, China, which hosted competitions in these disciplines at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. Planica, Slovenia, was confirmed as the host of the 2028 Ski Flying World Championships.
Lahti, Finland, was the only candidate for hosting the 2029 World Championships in Nordic disciplines, but it has not yet been confirmed. FIS has given Finnish organizers 30 days to meet the required criteria.
