BWF World Championships
The BWF World Championships, formerly known as IBF World Championships, and also known as the World Badminton Championships, is a badminton tournament sanctioned by Badminton World Federation (BWF). The tournament is one of the most prestigious in badminton, offering the most ranking points, together with the Summer Olympics badminton tournaments which was first introduced in 1992. The winners of this tournament are also crowned as "World Champions" of the sport, and are awarded a gold medal. The tournament started in 1977 and was held once every three years until 1983. However, the IBF (International Badminton Federation) faced  difficulty in hosting the first two events as the World Badminton Federation (which later merged with the IBF to form one badminton federation) hosted the same tournament a year after the IBF World Championships with the same goals. Since 1985, the tournament became biennial and played once every two years until 2005. Starting 2006, the tournament was changed to an annual event on the BWF calendar. The tournament is not held during the Summer Olympics years to avoid schedule conflicts. Location of the World Championships. The table below gives an overview of all host cities and countries of the World  Championships. The most recent games were held in Huelva. The number in parentheses following the city/country denotes how many times that city/country has hosted the championships. From 1989 to 2001 the world championships were held immediately after the Sudirman Cup at the same location. Past winners. So far, only 21 countries have achieved at least a bronze medal in the tournament: Eleven in Asia, Eight in Europe, one in North America, and one in Oceania. Africa is the only confederation that has not won a medal. At the age of 18, Ratchanok Inthanon became the youngest winner of  a singles title at the Championships. Ratchanok was less than 3 months older than Jang Hye-ock was when she won the women's doubles title at the 1995 Championships. Most successful players & national teams. Most successful players. Several players have won gold medals in more than one category in a World Championship; this includes: From 1977 up to 2001, the medals were usually divided among five countries, namely China, Korea, Denmark, Indonesia, Malaysia. However, in 2003, the winners included seven countries and in 2005 the medal board contained a record high of ten countries. Tony Gunawan also bears the  distinction of winning a gold medal in Men's Doubles, representing two countries, 2001 partnering with Halim Haryanto for Indonesia and in 2005 partnering with Howard Bach to give the United States its first medal in the competition. The 2005 edition also brought new faces to the mixed doubles event which had been dominated by China and Korea since 1997. With the retirement of defending champions and two-time winners Kim Dong-moon/Ra Kyung-min (Korea), Nova Widianto/Liliyana Natsir won Indonesia's first mixed doubles gold since 1980 when Christian Hadinata/Imelda Wiguna won it last for Indonesia . Below is the list of the most successful players ever, with 3 or more gold medals. Below is the list of the most successful player(s) in each category (listed according to their last title): Most successful national teams. Below is the gold medalists shown based by category and countries after the 2021 Championships. China has been the most successful in the World Championships ever since its inception in 1977. They were the only country ever to achieve a shutout of the medals which they did in 1987, 2010 and 2011. "BOLD means overall winner of that World Championships" Medal table . "Updated after XXVI edition (2021), does not include one stripped silver medal from 2014"