Beijing to Host Inaugural Obstacle World Championships

The International Modern Pentathlon Union’s inaugural Obstacle World Championships will take place in Beijing, which will host the first four years of the event, running through 2028.

The first World Championships, set to launch in October 2025, will be UIPM’s first step into standalone obstacle competitions. The competition will be hosted within the sports complex originally designed for the 2008 Olympic Summer Games, which has since been modernized and upgraded.

“The creation of the UIPM Obstacle World Championships is an important step in the ongoing integration of this popular urban sport into our movement,” said UIPM President Rob Stull. “Having successfully introduced obstacle as a new Pentathlon discipline, it is key that we also provide exciting opportunities for existing OCR athletes to test their skills in a high-quality competitive environment. It’s going to be amazing to see how pentathletes measure up against their OCR specialist counterparts in October.”

Hundreds of athletes from the obstacle and pentathlon communities will compete in obstacle courses spanning 100 meters, 400 meters and 3 kilometers. The launch of the competition follows the full integration of obstacle as a discipline of Modern Pentathlon, supported by the creation of the UIPM Obstacle Commission and an obstacle taskforce that was approved this week by the UIPM executive board.

“We are honored to welcome the world to Beijing for the UIPM 2025 Obstacle World Championships and proud to begin a four-year journey as hosts,” said Bin Zhang, president of the Chinese Modern Pentathlon Association. “Obstacle sports such as OCR are already hugely popular in China, especially among young people, and we believe this World Championships will serve as a powerful catalyst for the development of Modern Pentathlon across the country.”