FIS Could Move to Three World Championship Years Out of Every Four

The FIS Council met for a two-day session in Thun, Switzerland this week, and buried among a list of governance decisions was one that could genuinely reshape the international ski and snowboard calendar: FIS has agreed in principle to hold World Championships not just every other year, but in three years out of every four, starting in 2032.

It’s a bigger potential shift than it might first sound, and to understand why, it helps to know how the current every-other-year system came to exist in the first place. Currently, FIS World Championships in most disciplines are held every other year, while FIS Junior World Championships are held every year.

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When FIS was founded in Chamonix in 1924 — at the very first Winter Olympics — there was no separate World Championship at all. The Olympics simply were the World Championships. Olympic ski medals doubled as World Championship medals, an arrangement that continued for decades. That started to change after World War II. From 1948 through 1980, both Alpine and Nordic World Championships were held every even-numbered year — but in Olympic years, the Olympics themselves still served as the World Championships, while a separate, standalone World Championship event was held in the even years between Olympics. So skiers already had championships roughly every two years, alternating between “the Olympics count as Worlds” and “a dedicated non-Olympic World Championship.”

That arrangement finally ended after the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics. FIS decided to fully decouple its World Championships from the Olympics, and starting in 1985, both Alpine and Nordic World Championships moved to a clean odd-year cycle — held every other year, always in odd-numbered years, never overlapping with an Olympics again. Freestyle skiing adopted the same odd-year cycle when its World Championships launched in 1986, and snowboarding followed suit when its own World Championships began in 1996 (the two disciplines have shared a combined Freestyle/Snowboard World Championship since 2015).

The result is the system every current ski racing fan knows: Olympics every four years, World Championships in the odd years in between for Alpine, Nordic, Freestyle, and Snowboard. One notable exception: Ski Flying, which already runs its own separate even-year cycle — Oberstdorf hosted in 2026, and Planica hosts in 2028 — so the calendar isn’t quite as uniformly odd-year-only as it might seem.

The concept FIS approved this week would add World Championships in even, non-Olympic years as well — essentially reviving a version of the pre-1985 rhythm, minus the Olympics-doubling-as-Worlds part. Across a typical four-year Olympic cycle, that would mean:

• Year 1 (odd): World Championships
• Year 2 (even, non-Olympic): World Championships — new
• Year 3 (odd): World Championships
• Year 4 (Olympic year): Olympics only

That’s three World Championship editions for every one Olympics, starting in 2032 — up from the two-per-four-years rhythm the sport has followed since 1985. FIS also left the door open to moving faster, saying it’s willing to explore an additional edition as soon as 2028, pending a more detailed assessment.

It is important to note that FIS has only approved the concept so far, not a finished plan. The Council’s statement doesn’t specify which disciplines would actually receive the new even-year editions — that detail is still to be worked out. It’s reasonable to assume Alpine, Nordic, Freestyle, and Snowboard are the disciplines under consideration, since they’re the ones currently on the odd-year cycle this change would expand, but FIS hasn’t confirmed that breakdown yet.

According to the Council’s own summary, the decision followed a preliminary feasibility study built around three pillars: sporting value, calendar assessment, and commercial and media-rights potential. The commercial angle isn’t just implied — FIS has spent the past year actively building out the World Championships as a media property. Confirmed hosts are already locked in through 2029: Alpine in Crans-Montana (2027) and Narvik (2029); Nordic in Falun (2027) and Lahti (2029); Snowboard, Freestyle and Freeski in Montafon (2027) and Zhangjiakou (2029). In 2025, FIS signed a multi-year international media-rights deal with Infront covering all of these events. More World Championship editions means more of that same inventory to sell.

That same Thun meeting also saw the Council agree on core principles for a new long-term World Cup calendar, built around regional clusters, emerging-market development, and a formal “Calendar Impact Score” for evaluating events — suggesting FIS is thinking about the commercial value of its whole calendar, not just the World Championships in isolation.

The obvious question however is: does making World Championships more frequent make them less special? For athletes, an Olympic medal and a World Championship title are typically the two biggest prizes in the sport. Adding a third championship year to every four-year cycle could dilute that rarity even as it creates more opportunities to compete and win and could also dilute spectatorship.

Regulations and a formal draft calendar are still to come, working through FIS Management and the Media Rights Executive Board before returning to the Council for approval after the Autumn Meetings. Nothing changes for the confirmed 2027 and 2029 championships. But if the plan survives that process, the odd-year-only rhythm the sport has followed since 1985 could be on its way out.