World Skate

The international governing body for roller sports was initially created on 21 April 1924, when the Fédération Internationale de Patinage a Roulettes (FIPR) was formed as an international sport organization to conduct rink hockey competitions.

The federation would stage the first Rink Hockey World Championship in 1936 (Stuttgart, Germany), the first Roller Speed Skating World Championship in 1937 (Monza, Italy), and the first Artistic Roller Skating World Championship in 1947 (Washington, DC, United States).

In the 1960s, the federation changed its name to Fédération Internationale de Roller Skating (FIRS) and was officially recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as the international governing body for all roller skating sports. Barcelona 1992 would welcome the first roller sport Olympic demonstration event with a men’s Roller Hockey tournament.

The annual Congress held in Zell am See, Austria, in 2000, authorized a second title change for the federation, substituting “Roller Skating” with “Roller Sports” while retaining the FIRS acronym. Following the Extraordinary Congress resolution on September 2017 in Nanjing, China, the FIRS merged with the International Skateboarding Federation (ISF), and the organization changed its denomination to World Skate.

The Buenos Aires 2018 Youth Olympics included boys’ and girls’ events in Roller Skating, one of the other disciplines overseen by World Skate. Skateboarding was finally included in the Olympic programme at Tokyo 2020, with events for men and women.

World Skate currently governs the disciplines of Skateboarding, Speed Skating, Artistic Skating, Inline Slalom, Downhill, Inline Freestyle, Inline Hockey, Roller Hockey (also known as Rink Hockey), Roller Derby, Roller Freestyle, Scootering, and Skate Cross. As of January 2026, World Skate has 135 affiliated national federations. Based in Lausanne, Switzerland, the federation’s current president is Italy’s Sabatino Aracu.