London, UK: The Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO) and World Triathlon (TRI) have announced they are to build on their successful T100 partnership with the unveiling of the Triathlon World Tour.
The Triathlon World Tour will launch in 2027 and combine the existing T100 Triathlon World Tour, a rebranded World Triathlon Championship Series and World Triathlon Cups.
The T100 Tour will be rebranded as the T100 World Championship Series. The World Triathlon Championship Series (WTCS) will be rebranded the T50 World Championship Series and a newly formed feeder series will be branded a ‘Challenger’ series. Combined across the different distances and two competition levels – World Championship and Challenger – the Triathlon World Tour will grow to approximately 100 events per year from 2027, with a number of new events being announced in early 2026.
As well as consolidating the traditional standard, sprint and 100km triathlon distances under one unified brand and commercial offering, which clearly heroes the different distances, the PTO will invest in creating a single and consistent broadcast product, providing fans with a true year-round offering of live triathlon broadcasts showcasing the incredible talents of the world’s ultimate athletes. This brings to fruition the work done between the two organisations as part of their 12-year strategic partnership announced in October 2024, to grow the sport longer term.
World Triathlon and the PTO will unveil the full details of the new Triathlon World Tour, including branding, tiered competition structure and organisational set‑up, at an event in the first quarter of 2026, when fans, athletes, media and partners will be able to see, in one place, how a unified Triathlon World Tour will bring together the best of our sport into a single, compelling global format.
The strategy responds to the key findings of World Triathlon’s Deloitte Report, unveiled earlier this year, which sought to ‘reimagine the future of triathlon’ and ‘unlock triathlon’s untapped commercial and global opportunities’. While identifying the potential in the sport, the report also highlighted a fragmented ecosystem. The report recommended a change from a technically driven model to a commercially driven one – which is the intention of the new Triathlon World Tour.
Speaking about the announcement, PTO CEO Sam Renouf said:
“Announcing this new blueprint for the sport is an incredibly exciting next phase of our partnership with World Triathlon and to grow the sport. The Deloitte Report’s recommendation to move to a more commercially driven model was clear and aligns with the ambition to take the sport mainstream and adopt a model that many other sports have successfully followed to unlock greater value for the athletes and the whole ecosystem.”
“The new Triathlon World Tour and its respective T100, T50 and Challenger products, will mean there is a single brand and competition structure that helps fans, media, sponsors and other stakeholders to more clearly understand the offering.”
“It’s also a great validation of our strategy and our partnership with World Triathlon and a demonstration of the trust that we’ve built up. As well as being a great example of how our governance structure has allowed us to create close strategic alignment between three very important stakeholder groups: the professional athletes, the international federation and strategic investors. This alignment has allowed the PTO and the athletes to very quickly establish a new World Tour product that has already had a significant impact on the sport.”
Commenting on the news, World Triathlon President, Antonio Arimany, explained the rationale behind the move by saying: “World Triathlon’s Deloitte report made it very clear that our sport has enormous potential, but that we must adapt to an increasingly competitive market if we want to unlock it. One of the key insights was the need to follow the example of other international federations by clearly separating commercial operations from governance functions. That work strongly supported the case for the PTO to be our partner in this project, bringing together complementary strengths for the long-term benefit of triathlon”.
“At the same time, the report underlined how fragmented triathlon still is, both from a brand perspective – with World Triathlon, PTO/T100, IRONMAN, Challenge and others – and in terms of sporting hierarchy, from World Championships and the World Triathlon Championship Series to World Cups and T100 events. Our successful collaboration with the T100 Tour has already shown what is possible in terms of event delivery, broadcast audiences and commercial interest, as well as through the events we have trialled together in the French Riviera and in Wollongong in 2025, and now with the return of WTCS London in 2026. This next step is therefore a natural evolution, and we are genuinely excited about what it will mean for the future of triathlon and para triathlon when we unveil the full Triathlon World Tour early next year,” he explained.
How It Will Work In 2026
The 2026 T100 Triathlon World Tour will deliver its 9-stop T100 Race To Qatar as planned, and will visit: the Gold Coast (21-22 March), Singapore (25-26 April), Spain (23-24 May), San Francisco (6-7 June), Vancouver (15-16 August), French Riviera (19-20 September), Dubai (12-15 November), Saudi Arabia (November) & Qatar (11-12th December).
The 2026 World Triathlon Championship Series will take place across the 10-stop calendar it announced in Wollongong in October 2024: Abu Dhabi (27 March), Samarkand (25-26 April), Yokohama (16 May), Alghero (5 June), Quiberon (20 June), Hamburg (11 July), London (25 July), Weihai (29 August), Karlovy Vary (11 September) and the Pontevedra Championship Finals (24-29 September).
The Triathlon World Tour will begin in 2027 and the T100 World Championship Series and T50 World Championship Series will crown the only officially recognised World Champions respectively. Sitting below the World Championship level, the newly created Challenger Series will consist of a range of events – including those formerly known as World Triathlon Cups – across T100, standard and sprint distances, which will provide a clear pathway to their Championship equivalents and Olympic qualifying events.
Speaking about the news, yesterday’s new 2025 T100 World Champions Hayden Wilde and Kate Waugh were full of support.
“The PTO and World Triathlon are doing such a good job with the T100 to glamourise triathlon and I’m super grateful to be part of it. Especially following yesterday’s World Championship win,” said the British star. It really helps when we get to compete in beautiful locations like Qatar who have put on a phenomenal event.”
Wilde added: “I love this sort of racing. The T100 provides a great platform to showcase the sport, that enables athletes to show how good you can be individually on the bike and the run.”
Non Stanford, Chair of World Triathlon’s Athletes Committee, said: “This partnership is an important step towards the long-term sustainability of our sport and, crucially, towards expanding opportunities for athletes. We look forward to the evolution of the Triathlon World Tour beyond 2027, and working closely with the PTO to develop a progressive, athlete-focused brand that respects the sport’s rich heritage.”
Olympic Ambition
At the same time, the PTO and World Triathlon will continue to work together towards the 100km triathlon distance being considered for the Olympic Games; an idea first introduced at a World Triathlon summit in Hamburg in July 2024, which also reflects the IOC’s openness to explore more mass participation type events – as it did at the Paris 2024 Games with the Marathon Pour Tous.
Speaking further about the plans, Renouf added:
“We decided that now was the right moment to announce these plans, so that we can build out its delivery in a sustainable way as well as talk openly about the exciting media, broadcast and commercial opportunities that it will bring. As we’ve seen this season on the T100 Tour following our five-year partnership with Visit Qatar in January and then more recent announcements over the last few weeks, there is a real commercial appetite to partner with a sport where you can associate with the super human efforts of our elite athletes but also the mass participation, fitness and community that come with the range of amateur opportunities our events offer.”
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For Further Information:
Anthony Scammell E: [email protected]
Olalla Cernuda E: [email protected]
About Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO)
The PTO is a sports body that is co-owned by its professional athletes, seeking to elevate and grow the sport of triathlon and take it to the next level. Its T100 Triathlon World Tour was introduced in January 2024 and is designated by World Triathlon as the ‘official World Championship for long distance triathlon’, which is part of a 12-year strategic partnership with the sport’s international governing body. The T100 Triathlon World Tour is a season-long schedule of World Championship level races competed over 100km (2km swim, 80km bike and 18km run), where the world’s best triathletes go head-to-head in iconic locations on a global broadcast showing the races live around the world in 195+ territories, courtesy of the PTO’s partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery as well as a range of other international, regional and local broadcasters. So far in 2025 these have included: Singapore (5-6 April), San Francisco (31 May-1 June), Vancouver (13-15 June), London (9-10 August), French Riviera (30-31 August), the Spain T100 in Oropesa de Mar (20 September), the Wollongong T100 (18 October) and the Dubai T100 (13-16 November). The first Qatar T100 Triathlon World Championship Final took place 10-13 December. T100 weekends are ‘festivals of multisport’ and feature a range of opportunities for amateur athletes of all levels to get involved. From experienced amateurs tackling the 100km distance to first-time swim, bike and run participants taking on single discipline, untimed events. For more information visit www.t100triathlon.com
World Triathlon
World Triathlon is the international governing body for the Olympic and Paralympic sport of triathlon and all related multisport disciplines around the world, including duathlon, aquathlon, cross triathlon and winter triathlon. Triathlon made its Olympic debut in Sydney 2000, with a third medal event, the Mixed Team Relay, added to the programme at Tokyo 2020, while para triathlon was first added to the Paralympic programme at Rio 2016. World Triathlon is proudly committed to the development of the sport worldwide, with inclusion, equality, sustainability and transparency at our core as we seek to help triathletes at all levels of the sport to be extraordinary.
