World Climbing, the federation that runs competition climbing.

The short version

• Name: World Climbing since 10 December 2025; the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC) before that.
• Founded: 27 January 2007 in Frankfurt, Germany, as the IFSC, according to World Climbing.
• Disciplines: Boulder, Lead, Speed and Para Climbing, as World Climbing lists them.
• Olympic status: recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), provisionally in 2007 and definitively in 2010, per World Climbing.
• Main series: the World Climbing Series, which replaced the IFSC World Cup name from the 2026 season, according to Gripped.

The rename, December 2025

World Climbing's about page (read 21 October 2026) says the IFSC rebranded as World Climbing on 10 December 2025. Gripped reported the change the same day, 18 years after the federation was founded, and said the World Cup would be replaced by the World Climbing Series from 2026, with the five continental bodies taking up the new branding as well. Gripped quoted the federation's president, Marco Scolaris, as saying the name honours the federation's heritage while looking ahead. Wikipedia also records the World Cup's rename to the World Climbing Series in December 2025.

Results, event pages and news from before the rename still carry the IFSC name, and so do the 2023 and 2025 World Championships. These pages use the name that applied at the time when they describe a past event, and World Climbing otherwise.

Founding and recognition

According to World Climbing's own account:

• It was founded as the IFSC on 27 January 2007 in Frankfurt by 57 federations.
• It continues the work of the International Council for Competition Climbing (ICC), created in 1997 inside the UIAA, the international mountaineering federation.
• The IOC gave it provisional recognition on 10 December 2007 and definitive recognition on 12 February 2010.
• It is a member of IWGA, ARISF and ASOIF, and is recognised by the International Paralympic Committee.

The count of founding members is disputed. World Climbing gives 57; a mirrored copy of an older Wikipedia article gives 48. Wikipedia places the federation's seat in Turin, Italy, with about 98 member federations, and the IOC's federation profile also gives a Turin address. We could not confirm the member count on World Climbing's own pages.

The UIAA tells the split from its side: its 2006 General Assembly allowed competition sport climbing to leave, which led to the IFSC's founding in 2007. Ice climbing competitions stayed with the UIAA, which has run its Ice Climbing World Tour since 2002. The BMC's competition history agrees that 57 federations founded the IFSC in 2007 and took over competition governance from the UIAA. The wider story of how competitions began, from Sportroccia in 1985 (the first international competition, per Wikipedia) onwards, is on the competition climbing history page.

Disciplines and competitions

World Climbing lists four disciplines: Boulder, Lead, Speed and Para Climbing. How each is scored is explained on how competitions work. The federation's own summary of its competitions:

Not every source dates the start of Speed the same way. World Climbing says Lead and Speed World Cups both began in 1989. Wikipedia says the first UIAA World Cup in 1989 was Lead only and that Speed joined the World Cup in 1998. For bouldering, Wikipedia's 1999 matches World Climbing. LaCrux (17 March 2026) says bouldering's competition debut was the Top Rock Challenge in 1998 and that it joined the World Championships in 2001, and the BMC's timeline says bouldering entered competition in 1998 with the first Youth Climbing Series.

World Climbing says its competitions have been held only on artificial walls since the early 1990s, to avoid environmental impact. The BMC dates the decision to 1990, when, it says, the UIAA ruled that international events would use artificial walls only. World Climbing also notes that sport climbing appeared at the ANOC World Beach Games in Doha in 2019.

The calendar it runs today

World Climbing published its 2026 calendar on 9 January 2026, labelled provisional. It listed 13 World Climbing Series events across Boulder, Lead and Speed, four Para Series events and a Youth Championship in Arco, Italy. A later World Climbing article (29 July 2026) added Fukuoka, Japan, describing it as the fifth and final Para Series event of 2026, and announced a team event there, the Nations Grand Finale. Wikipedia counts the 2026 season as the 38th edition of the series, with 19 events per gender: 6 Boulder, 6 Lead and 7 Speed. Where the 2026 season stands is on the 2026 World Climbing Series page.

Crowds, as the federation reports them

Attendance figures here are the federation's own claims. World Climbing says the 2023 World Championships in Bern drew 42,000 spectators. Climbing Business Journal, reporting the IFSC's 2019 annual report, gave 2019 World Cup crowd estimates of about 18,000 at Chamonix, 10,000 at Briancon, 9,000 at Munich and 7,700 at Vail. We have not seen independent counts for either year.

World Climbing and the UIAA

The two federations do different jobs. World Climbing runs competition sport climbing and its Olympic and Paralympic events. The UIAA represents mountaineering, publishes the UIAA grade scale and the UIAA Safety Label for equipment, and runs ice climbing competitions. Both, and the national bodies under them, are described on governing bodies.