Budapest beckons: ones to watch at the World Athletics Ultimate Championship
With Kerr and Ingebrigtsen already the headline act, a host of other rivalries — Lyles' sprint double, Mahuchikh's Budapest reunion, Duplantis chasing yet another major victory — are shaping up before the final fields are confirmed after this week's Diamond League final.
The World Athletics Ultimate Championship remains a work in progress. Automatic invitations built around the 2024 Olympic champions and the 26 world champions crowned at last year's World Championships in Tokyo are locked in – and the world-ranking qualification period that ran from September 2, 2025 closed on September 1. But the final pieces of the field — the 25 Diamond League final winners — won't be confirmed until this week's Diamond League final in Brussels. Even then, a handful of exceptional invitations could still be added.
So consider this a guide to who's already through, who's likely to be there and who's worth keeping an eye on as the last invitations land before Budapest's National Athletics Centre hosts three nights of action from September 11-13.
Josh Kerr and Jakob Ingebrigtsen's first meeting in a global 1500m final needs little introduction by now. Both were handed exceptional invitations to a field expanded specially to accommodate them, alongside automatic qualifiers Cole Hocker, the 2024 Olympic champion, and Isaac Nader, the 2025 world champion. It remains the most eagerly anticipated race on the entire programme — but it's far from the only one worth watching.
While Kerr and Ingebrigtsen have dominated the headlines, Hocker has done something almost as remarkable with far less noise: alongside his Olympic 1500m title, he also won the world 5000m title in Tokyo last year, meaning he's automatically qualified for both events in Budapest, plus a 1500m victory in Zurich last week.
Ingebrigtsen, the Olympic 5000m champion, is already doubling up himself. If Hocker follows suit, Budapest could see the same pair contest both middle-distance finals across the weekend.
Elsewhere among the automatic qualifiers, Georgia Hunter Bell will be aiming to win the women's 1500m after a great season so far.
Noah Lyles qualifies twice over — Olympic 100m champion and world 200m champion — and the obvious question is whether he'll double in Budapest too. He'd face Letsile Tebogo, the Olympic 200m champion, and Oblique Seville, the world 100m champion, in what promises to be one of the most stacked sprint programmes assembled outside an Olympic Games.
On the women's side, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden did something similar in Tokyo, winning both the world 100m and 200m titles, and lines up against Olympic champions Julien Alfred (100m) and Gabby Thomas (200m) in what could be the most competitive short sprints of the entire championship.
The 100m/110m hurdles fields carry two fresh rivalries. Masai Russell, the Olympic 100m hurdles champion, faces world champion Ditaji Kambundji, while this year's in-form men's sprint hurdler is Ja'Kobe Tharp, who broke the world record earlier this summer.
Yaroslava Mahuchikh returns to the city where she won her first world title in 2023, arriving as both world record-holder and Olympic champion — though it's Nicola Olyslagers, the 2025 world champion, who represents her sharpest challenge. On the men's side, Gianmarco Tamberi, another exceptional invitation and another athlete with history in Budapest, faces Olympic champion Hamish Kerr in a final that already has real needle to it before a single bar goes up.
Mondo Duplantis needs no introduction after being confirmed as one of the event's two "Ultimate Stars" and writing the championship's official anthem, which he'll perform live to close the championship on the Sunday evening. He arrives as both Olympic and world pole vault champion, unbeaten across an entire season. Less discussed but well worth watching is the women's competition, where Olympic champion Nina Kennedy heads a field that will be looking to make its own mark on a night otherwise dominated by talk of Duplantis.
The Ultimate's slimmed-down, 28-event programme has an unusual quirk: only the women contest the triple jump and only the men throw the hammer. That means Thea LaFond, the Olympic triple jump champion, and Ethan Katzberg, the Olympic hammer champion, arrive as the closest thing their events have to guaranteed headline acts, without a direct opposite-gender equivalent on the bill.
The long jump pits Olympic champions Tara Davis-Woodhall and Miltiadis Tentoglou against the world's best, while the javelin field is headed by Olympic champions Haruka Kitaguchi and Arshad Nadeem, the Pakistani thrower whose 2024 Olympic gold ended a long wait for a first individual Olympic title for his country.
As hosts, Hungary has been guaranteed a presence regardless of qualification, with exceptional invitations already confirmed for Patrik Enyingi (400m), Luca Kozák (100m hurdles), Sára Mátó (400m hurdles) and Boglárka Takács (100m and 200m), plus both mixed relay teams. Expect the loudest reception of the weekend whenever any of them steps onto the track in front of a home crowd.
Hunter Bell aside, Keely Hodgkinson is through as Olympic 800m champion but withdrew from her last race in Zurich. If she competes, she will likely face a rematch with fellow European medallists Audrey Werro and Femke Broeders-Bol.
Kerr's 1500m spot is confirmed via exceptional invitation. Beyond that, several British athletes were tracking well enough on the world rankings to be in contention as that qualification window closed on September 1 — among them Amy Hunt, fresh off four gold medals at the European Championships and well placed in the women's 100m rankings, and European 100m champion Romell Glave.
Beyond the athletes, the Ultimate is built to look nothing like a conventional championship. The field of play will feature a black infield, with only the event currently in progress lit and in focus, and each session's running order is designed so only one field event happens at a time wherever possible.
There's no jury of appeal. Athletes can raise an immediate oral protest with the referee on the field of play, or submit a written protest within 30 minutes of results being confirmed. Ties for first place in the vertical jumps will be settled by a jump-off rather than shared, and field events beyond the vertical jumps follow a new round-progression format: all athletes get an attempt in rounds one and two, before the field narrows to the top six for round three and the top four for the decisive fourth round.
The action starts before competition does. On September 10 — "The Day Before" — 200m runners will select their own semi-final heat and lane live in world-ranking order, part of a wider afternoon that also includes a press conference, a red carpet athlete arrival, a media day and a Kids' Athletics Ultimate Challenge fronted by Tebogo and Jefferson-Wooden as team captains.
Budapest won't have its finished startlists until after this week's Diamond League final in Brussels, and a small number of exceptional invitations could yet reshape individual fields further. But even with pieces still to fall into place, the shape of an extraordinary championship is already visible: reigning Olympic and world champions across almost every event, genuine rivalries renewed and created, and a $10 million prize pot ensuring every one of them has every reason to turn up and mean it.
