World Sailing

Sailing (or yachting, as it was also known during most of the 20th century) first appeared at the Olympic Games at Paris 1900. The sport’s governing body was formed on 14 October 1907, in Paris, France, as the International Yacht Racing Union (IYRU). At Seoul 1988, separate sailing events exclusively for women were introduced at the Olympics. The federation would change its name to the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) on 5 August 1996, in an attempt to limit the elitist connotation associated with the term “yachting”.

Each sailing class is governed by its own class association, which is responsible for organizing major championships. To hold an official World Championship, a class must be recognized by the international governing body, meeting criteria such as international distribution and participation levels. Once recognized, the class association has the exclusive right to organize annual World Championships, subject to the federation’s regulations and oversight. This decentralized structure, where individual class associations manage their own championships under the umbrella of the international federation, is somewhat unique among sport’s governing bodies.

The ISAF staged the first edition of the Sailing World Championships in 2003 (Cádiz, Spain), where all the events present at the Summer Olympics programme are also contested.

Sailing has also been included in the Youth Summer Olympics since its inaugural edition at Singapore 2010, with events for boys and girls.

The discipline of Para sailing is also overseen by the federation. Para sailing was introduced to the Paralympic Games as a demonstration sport in 1996, and became an official Paralympic sport in the 2000 Summer Games, one year after the début of the Para World Sailing Championships, at Cádiz 1999. Para sailing was removed from the Paralympics programme after the 2016 Games, but the federation is still recognized by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC). One of the organization’s missions is to “sustain its worldwide reach of well over the 32 countries across three IPC regions required for inclusion in the Paralympic Games”.

The federation would be rebranded to World Sailing (WS) in 2015. As of January 2026, WS has 150 affiliated national federations. World Sailing’s office is based in London, Great Britain, and its current president is China’s Li Quanhai.

Note: There was no president before 1946, only a chairman was appointed for every meeting.