In a first for Budapest, the Hungarian capital will stage the World Athletics Championships in 2023. Three years after the rebuilt Puskás Ferenc Stadion co-hosts the European football championships, a new arena, the National Athletics Centre, will open by Kvassay Lock. This location, where Csepel island meets south Pest, just past the Millennial Arts Complex, was also key to Budapest’s ultimately failed bid to host the Olympics Games in 2024.
As announced yesterday in Monaco, the World Athletics Championships are coming to Budapest in 2023. The event, only one down in importance from the Olympics, has recently been held in Beijing, Moscow and London, so this can be seen as a major coup for Hungary.
A biennial event held on non-Olympic years, the World Athletics Championships for 2023 will be run over nine days in mid-August. The new state-financed National Athletics Centre will have a capacity of 40,000. Due to open in late 2019, the rebuilt Puskás Ferenc Stadion could not have been used as a host venue as it has been designed for football use only, and will not have a running track.
