By Preet Majithia
November 25, 2024
The schedule surrounding the track and field season is a constant topic of debate, and given the changes coming next year, we can expect that debate to wage on. However, many people who have long argued that the climax of the season should be at the end rather than part way through the season, are sure to be satisfied: World Athletics finally listened! The World Athletics Championships – which takes place every other year – will now be the season-ending meet. For 2025, it will take place from September 13th to the 21st.
Athletes therefore need to be at their peak for this later point in the year, which very much shifts the timetable for training and racing blocks for many athletes. It may not sound like much, but it’s a significant departure from holding Worlds (or the Olympics) in mid-August as has often been the case.
With the World Indoor Tour Gold series of meetings starting in late January, all the way through to the end of the World Championships in late September, it’s possible for an athlete’s season to stretch out over the better part of eight months! Surely there’s no such thing as too much track and field… but if there is, we’re almost certainly going to find out in 2025!
2025 also rather unusually has a World Indoor Championships in the same year as a World Outdoor Championships (albeit this also most recently occurred in 2022), and further disruption to the normal season plan for many top athletes arises from the emergence of Grand Slam Track. Anderson Emerole highlights some of the potential scheduling dilemmas for athletes and coaches in this excellent video, but let’s dig into a few of the potential problems in writing, below.
The Indoor Season
Not all athletes participate in the indoor season, but 2025 brings both a World and European Indoor Championships, so there is plenty of incentive for athletes looking to expand their hardware collection. The indoor season for professional athletes typically commences in late January. It concludes in early- to mid-March, but World Indoors is happening from March 21st to the 23rd with European Indoors taking up the early March slot from the 6th to the 9th.
This World Indoors is the one that was meant to be held in China in 2020 and has been postponed multiple times. It’s presumably taking place five years late instead of being completely canceled because of the financial arrangements in place between organizers and World Athletics.
Nanjing is a long way to travel for European and American athletes, and for those looking to medal, being in peak form is likely to be necessary. This may well make it trickier for athletes to focus on it, and we could certainly also see a lot of European athletes prioritising the European Indoors over World Indoors as well.
In other years athletes who do participate indoors would typically then go back into training for a couple of months before opening up their outdoor campaigns in mid- to late-May or even into June, but this seems trickier in 2025, so there may be more athletes skipping World Indoors or even the Indoor season in its entirety.
April and May
Early April kicks off with the first of the four Grand Slam Track meets in Kingston, Jamaica, on April 4th through 6th. This feels like a tight turnaround for anyone coming from China, particularly with the need to transition from indoors to outdoors which in most cases significantly impacts the nature of each athlete’s event and consequently the training involved. For example, Josh Kerr and Yared Nuguse were indoor 3000m medallists in 2024 and it seems unlikely they would go to race over this distance when they have to run 1500m and 800m outdoors just a couple of weeks later, even if the travel were not a factor. For sprinters, transitioning from 60m to 100m or 100/110m hurdles would also be a major change which feels implausible with such a short turnaround.
Kevin Morris / @kevmofoto
The end of April brings the beginning of the Diamond League season, starting with back-to-back meets in China on April 26th and May 3rd. This is quickly followed by World Relays, also in China on May 11th and 12th, so it feels like there’s certainly going to be a fair few sprinters who might do a little tour of China over this period. However Grand Slam participants will be at the second meet in Miami from May 2nd through the 4th, so the timing poses an interesting dilemma for top athletes signed to Grand Slam whose countries need their presence to boost the chances of qualifying their relay teams to the World Championships. It is worth noting that 14 of the 16 teams in each relay will be qualified at World Relays, with only two spots available on time, so the majority of countries will need to send strong teams to ensure their progression.
Mid-May brings Diamond Leagues in Doha (May 16th) and Rabat (May 25th), which are likely to be missing the sprinters who have been at World Relays as well as Grand Slam athletes who would be preparing for the third Slam in Philadelphia from May 30th through June 1st. Perhaps this means there’ll be a bit of an opportunity for the field events to take the limelight at these early-season Diamond Leagues.
June and July
June is when the outdoor track and field season (in a normal year) starts to really heat up. By this point, the majority of athletes have opened up their seasons. Over the last couple of years, we have seen multiple world records being broken at the European Diamond Leagues: Rome, Oslo, Stockholm and Paris (June 6th, 12th, 15th and 20th in 2025) while American athletes who don’t fancy the European trip also start running against stronger competition at the LA and NYC Grand Prix meets (June 8th and 29th). In 2025, with many top American athletes signed to Grand Slam Track, and with the final meet in LA from June 27th to the 29th clashing with the NYC Grand Prix, it is likely that the fields in NYC may be not as strong as in previous years.
There’s a further interesting potential scheduling conflict on those dates with the Jamaican National Championships currently scheduled for June 26th through 29th, which could impact Jamaican athletes. (Our guess is Jamaican GST Racers will be granted an exemption from the Los Angeles meet.) That said, Jamaica does usually have its championships in the national championship window which in 2025 is in early August, so it is possible that these dates will change.
July brings the Pre Classic in Eugene on July 5th and then further Diamond Leagues in Monaco (July 11th) and London (July 19th), all three of which are always appointment viewing.
Justin Britton / @justinbritton
Although this is one of the busiest periods of the season, it’s also possible that in 2025 some top athletes could take the opportunity to go back into heavy training to reduce the chance of burnout/over-racing and to focus on being in peak shape ahead of their national championships in early August.
Another interesting factor is the potential impact on NCAA athletes, with the NCAA Championships being held from June 11th through 14th. There is a much bigger gap between NCAAs and various national championships in early August, and of course to the World Championships in September. It remains to be seen whether the break and chance to reset will be of benefit to these athletes, or whether the loss of peak fitness from June has an impact on NCAA athletes. Almost all of them compete indoors, and tend to have a packed season schedule, focussing on a peak in mid-June so we sometimes see them struggle to maintain that fitness to later in the year.
August and September
The USATF Outdoor Championships take place from July 31st through August 3rd. There are two national championship windows: August 2nd to 3rd and August 23rd to 24th, albeit most countries are expected to use the earlier window as this is where there is a significant gap in the Diamond League schedule to allow for them.
There is a jam-packed final leg of the European Diamond League circuit including Silesia (August 16th), Lausanne (August 20th) and Brussels (August 22nd), as well as the Diamond League Final in Zurich on August 27th and 28th. Although there remains some uncertainty on this point, it seems like wildcards for the World Championships will be handed out to 2025 Diamond League Final winners, so it’s possible that in some events we could see athletes who have missed out at USAs make a last-minute bid to try and secure that wildcard place.
Everything then builds up to the World Championships from September 13th through 21st to close out this incredibly busy year.
With the non-stop action, it remains to be seen how athletes will choose to schedule their seasons. Will we get the regular season matchups we want to see? Or will the packed schedule mean that fields even at some of the bigger regular season meets are slightly diluted as athletes make different choices about how to ensure they are in peak shape at the right time, particularly for USAs and World Championships?
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Preet Majithia
Preet is a London based accountant by day and now a track fan the rest of the time. Having never run a step in his life he’s in awe of all these amazing athletes and excited to help bring some attention to the sport.
