IQA opens bidding for 2026-2029 World Cup and Continental Games host sites

The International Quadball Association opened bidding for its 2026-2029 event cycle with a Sept. 7, 2025 deadline for World Cup and Continental Games hosts. The schedule is more than a venue hunt: it is the sport's map of where major competition will land, how far national teams will travel, and which regions can absorb the cost. By July 25, 2025, the IQA had already put the next round of host selection on the table.

The Continental Games run every other year, on the opposite year from the IQA World Cup, and the IQA sorts continental regions by team density and reasonable travel distances. That matters because host selection decides more than trophies. It shapes federation budgets, travel windows, and whether a region can stage a championship without stretching itself thin. An older IQA event-bidding page said host cities had to provide the infrastructure and financial support needed for large-scale events, which means the bidding process rewards places that can deliver venues, staffing, and money, not just enthusiasm.

The next major anchor is already set. The IQA and Quadball UK announced that the 2027 IQA Quadball World Cup will be held at Barn Elms Sports Centre in London, England, from July 23-25, 2027. The 2025 World Cup went to Brussels and Tubize, Belgium, showing how the sport's biggest stage rotates across countries while staying inside a formal bidding system. The 2028 Continental Games bidding page adds another fixed point, with submissions due by June 1, 2026.

Quadball's growth gives that structure real weight. The IQA describes the sport as mixed gender and full contact, played across the world, and says it has grown from the inaugural match in 2005 to thousands of players in more than 40 countries. Quadball Europe also notes that the World Cup has been held every two years, with the 2012 edition branded the IQA Summer Games and the 2014 edition called the IQA Global Games. The naming has changed, but the underlying calendar has stayed rigid enough to support planning years in advance.

That is where smaller or newer regions can gain leverage. Because the IQA weighs team density and travel distance, a federation that can cluster enough teams into a workable region has a better case for hosting or for landing Continental Games. The next four years will be shaped by that calculus, with deadlines, bids, and venue commitments deciding who gets the stage and who has to wait for the next cycle.