All the basics you need to know in order to enjoy the ultimate's biggest international event.
August 26, 2024 by Edward Stephens in Preview with 0 comments
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What Are the World Ultimate Championships?
In short, WUC is our World Cup.
The WUC – often called simply ‘Worlds’ by players – is by far the most high-level and prestigious of all the global international events organized by the World Flying Disc Federation (WFDF). It takes place once every four years.
Countries from all over the world enter teams in up to three different competitive divisions: Women’s, Open1, and Mixed. Each competing country forms a team of their best players – often bringing together rivals from elite club competition – with the hopes to win a medal at the end of a week-long event. For the top nations, virtually every player on a roster is a bona fide superstar on their club. As a result, it’s nearly as fascinating to see how well each nation’s best and brightest find ways to work together as it is to see how they stack up against the rest of the globe.
That being said, don’t kid yourself – the best reason to pay attention will be the high-octane fight for the medals. Anyone who says they know how that fight will play out is lying. Thanks to the Covid pandemic, which canceled the scheduled 2020 edition of the event, it has been eight long years since the last WUC in London. Massive changes have taken place in the sport’s ecosystem since then, with some of the sport’s longtime hotbeds, such as Japan, Canada, and Australia, potentially yielding ground to nations on the rise. Germany, Colombia, France, Belgium, and Italy all enter the tournaments with legitimate medal potential in at least one of the divisions.
They will all be measuring themselves against the United States, though. Long a dominant power in ultimate, the US teams won gold in all three divisions2 in high style in 2016, failing to give up so much as a single break in any of the championship games. They followed that performance up with gold medal performances at both the 2017 and 2022 World Games – see below for a quick World Games explainer – to cement their position as the sport’s global standard.
The past successes of the US, though, do not guarantee more gold this time around. Colombia have already defeated USA Women’s at an important warm-up tournament. Indeed, even some of the aforementioned championships were uncertain. In both World Games, Team USA lost games during the group stage3. In 2022, they faced strong challenges in their semifinal (Colombia) and the gold medal match (Australia), escaping each with a two-point victory. And while it wasn’t as close in terms of the score, Japan pushed Team USA to the limit in the 2016 Open division gold medal match, widely considered one of the best games in the sport’s history.
And there are more signs that the gap between the US and the rest of the world is shrinking. The top Colombian women’s club Medellín Revolution (featuring many of the players taking the field for Colombia at WUC) beat out San Francisco Fury at the most recent World Ultimate Club Championships4. Clubs in other divisions from Australia, the UK, Belgium, and Canada were also highly competitive against America’s best at the same tournament. Just how narrow has the lead become? That question will be tested extensively over the course of the week.
Finally, the stakes of the event are not limited to medals or global bragging rights: it is also the qualification tournament for next year’s World Games, a multi-week Olympics-style spectacle featuring several dozen sports. The World Games is more selective than any other global event in the sport: there is only space for eight teams. With an automatic bid for the host country – in this case, China, who are not expected to qualify on merit this cycle – that leaves every major ultimate-playing country in the world scrapping for only seven slots.5 That potential prize ensures drama beyond the top-level medal contention.
The Contenders
Mixed
- Favorites: United States
- Contenders: France, Italy, Canada, Australia
- Medal Hopefuls: Great Britain, Japan
USA are the clear favorites in the Mixed division. It would be shocking if they took home anything less than gold. That being said, any of the four contenders below them could easily take it if USA Mixed slip up in the bracket.
Open
- Favorites: United States
- Contenders: Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Belgium
- Medal Hopefuls: Germany, Japan, Colombia, New Zealand
Once again, USA are the favorites. The gap here is much smaller: any of the contenders have a puncher’s chance against even a solid USA Open effort. The medal hopefuls here probably don’t have the consistency to complete the run, but all of them have clear talent.
Women’s
- Favorites: Colombia, United States
- Contenders: Germany, Canada, Australia
- Medal Hopefuls: Japan, Great Britain
Here there are two favorites, as Colombia Women’s, led by twins Manuela and Valeria Cárdenas, have essentially matched both the floor and the ceiling that were, for many years, the sole province of USA Women’s. It’s hard to see either of those two juggernauts finishing off of the medal podium. The contenders are not far behind: all of them have a true gold medal ceiling, although the floor is much lower.
All-Time Gold Medal Count
A full run-down of each division’s past champions.
Women’s
- United States: 8
- Japan, Canada: 2
- Finland, Sweden: 1
Open
- United States: 10
- Canada: 3
- Sweden: 1
Mixed
- United States, Canada: 3
Helpful Links
Some useful resources to help you tune in, stay up to date, and get excited.
- How to Watch & Streaming Schedule
- Schedule and Results
- Team USA Rosters
- International Roster Announcements
- Team USA Tryout Recaps (East Coast, West Coast, Player Perspectives)
Videos of National Teams
Want a primer on some of the national teams before the tournament starts? Check out games they have already played this year at warm-up tournaments.
- US Open (Australia Open, Canada Open/Women’s/Mixed)
- Windmill (USA Open, Australia Mixed, Austria Open, Canada Open, France Open/Mixed, Germany Open/Mixed, GB Women’s/Mixed, Italy Mixed, Switzerland Mixed)
- London Invite (Australia Mixed, Belgium Open, Canada Open, GB Open/Mixed)
- TEP (USA Women’s/Mixed, Canada Women’s/Mixed, Colombia Open/Women’s/Mixed)
- Dream Cup (Japan Open/Women’s)
‘Open’ is the term used by WFDF to refer to the division that is effectively the Men’s division ↩
Actually five, counting Master’s Open and Master’s Womens ↩
Colombia in 2017; Germany in 2022 ↩
ultimate’s Champions League-style tournament ↩
For a detailed look at the scoring system for World Games qualification, see WFDF’s in-depth explainer. ↩
