BUDAPEST — Armand “Mondo” Duplantis is the headline act as the world’s top-ranked track and field athletes gather for this weekend’s inaugural Ultimate Championship in Budapest, where they will compete for unmatched prize money totaling $10 million.
From Friday, some 381 athletes from 65 federations will gather for three nights of competition at the Zsivotzky Gyula Nemzeti Atletikai Kozpont stadium that hosted the world championships in 2023.
Automatic qualifiers for the season-ending Ultimate event include 26 Olympic champions from the 2024 Paris Games, 26 world champions from Tokyo last year and 25 Diamond League winners from the 2026 season, along with the best performers of the year based on the world rankings qualification system.
There are no quotas for countries, with inclusion based solely on performance.
“We have created the Ultimate to ensure every athletics season culminates with a major global championship — one with real meaning for the athletes, fans, media and broadcasters,” said World Athletics president Sebastian Coe, with 2026 having neither a world championships nor an Olympic Games.
“Our North Star is to maximize our global broadcast audience and so it is unapologetically made for TV to engage broadcasters in a new way to help further elevate national heroes.”
On the track, the two semifinals in the 100-m, 200-m, 400-m, 800-m, 100-m hurdles/110-m hurdles and 400-m hurdles will feature eight athletes, and the top four in each will make it through to the final. The 1,500 m, 5,000 m and relay races will be straight finals.
All field events will be straight finals, although there is no place for shot put, discus or women’s hammer throw.
The horizontal jumps, with the men’s triple jump a notable absence, and throws will feature four rounds, with each of the eight athletes guaranteed two attempts.
Each Ultimate winner will receive the top prize of $150,000, a sum World Athletics said was a gamechanger in a sport often seen to be underfunded.
But every athlete will earn: an eighth-placed finisher in an individual even, for example, will bag $10,000.
“We have a $10million prize pot where every athlete who competes goes home with something,” said Coe of the 28 disciplines delivered in a fast-paced, made-for-television format.
World and Olympic pole vault champion Duplantis, who improved his own world record to 6.31m earlier this year, will face a field that includes Emmanouil Karalis, who has cleared 6.20 m this season and arrives in Budapest as the Diamond League champion.
Duplantis withdrew from the Brussels Diamond League finals as a precaution when tightness in his leg resurfaced, raising questions over how fit he is coming into Budapest.
Several of this season’s other world record-breakers will also be in action: Ja’Kobe Tharp in the 110-m hurdles, US teammate Masai Russell in the 100-m hurdles and Brazil’s Alison dos Santos in the men’s 400-m hurdles.
Other Olympic champions entered include Gabby Thomas, Marileidy Paulino, Keely Hodgkinson, Yaroslava Mahuchikh, Letsile Tebogo and Ethan Katzberg, while world champions Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, Oblique Seville and Collen Kebinatshipi are also among those set to compete.
