Graz hosts dodgeball’s largest world championships, drawing 123 teams

Graz drew 123 teams from 35 countries to Raiffeisen Sport Park Graz, and the World Dodgeball Federation later cast the August 11 to 17, 2024 championships as the largest global gathering in the sport’s history. Its post-event totals put the field at more than 1,300 athletes, coaches and officials, while a later host-selection announcement described the same event as more than 1,200 participants across six divisions.

The Austrian Dodgeball Association hosted the tournament, which featured foam men, foam women, foam mixed, cloth men, cloth women and cloth mixed divisions. WDBF said the championships had representation from all six continents, a detail that mattered as much as the raw turnout: Graz was not just large for dodgeball, it was broad enough to show the sport operating in multiple formats and across a genuinely international field.

The federation also raised the event’s competitive standard before the first ball was thrown. On July 12, 2024, WDBF announced anti-doping testing for the Graz championships, tying the tournament to World Anti-Doping Agency-aligned rules for its World Championships. That put the event in the company of other elite international competitions, with venue standards, compliance protocols and multi-day scheduling handled as part of the package rather than as an afterthought.

Graz’s scale becomes clearer beside the previous edition in Edmonton. WDBF says the 2022 World Championships in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, drew 700 participants from 15 nations across 65 teams and six divisions, and that 2022 was the first time foam and cloth were contested together on the same World Championships stage. By 2024, the field in Graz had more than doubled in size and widened to 35 countries, a jump that explains why future hosts will now be measured against Austria’s benchmark.

WDBF’s own timeline underscores how far the event had come by then. The federation says it formed in July 2011 and has run the World Championships since 2012, but Graz marked a new reference point for the sport’s competitive calendar. The organization is already projecting even more for 2026 in Bangkok, where it expects more than 1,500 athletes from more than 50 countries and more than $4 million in economic impact. After Graz, those targets read less like ambition and more like the next standard to beat.