Announcement

Update on the BWF World Ranking

After careful analysis and consideration of the World Rankings, BWF will start the transition process towards a “live 52-week ranking” in Week 31 (2 August 2022 ranking publication), finishing with a live ranking published on 3 January 2023.


Historical Background

Due to the impact of COVID-19, the BWF World Rankings were frozen as of 17 March 2020.

The BWF World Rankings were reopened on 2 February 2021, following the HSBC BWF World Tour Finals 2020 being hosted in week 4 2021, based on the following principles:

  • Tournaments already included in the BWF World Rankings list as of 17 March 2020 would remain.
  • Tournaments counting for the BWF World Rankings hosted after 17 March 2020 would be added to the BWF World Rankings.
  • Tournaments sanctioned as World Ranking tournaments going forward would be added weekly.

Transition Principles

Key principles governing the transition towards a live 52-week World Ranking include the following:

  • The tournament calendar is now robust enough, including at the Grade 3 Level:
    • With a stable Grade 1 and World Tour calendar for the remainder of 2022, and an increasing number of Grade 3 tournaments throughout the majority of continents towards 2023, we are at a stage where the impact of the removal of historical ranking points is minimised, and the current points to be earned is robust enough to support a live ranking by the beginning of 2023.
  • That Member Associations have enough time to plan effectively for the qualification period for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and other key tournaments.
  • That Member Associations have enough notice to appropriately prepare for the start of the transition period.

Transition Process / Timeline

For each week of the newly published ranking starting on 2 August 2022, four weeks of historical World Ranking points will be removed from the BWF World Rankings, commencing with those from week 12 (March 2019).

The only exception is in the final week (3 January 2023 publication) where three weeks of historical tournaments will be removed to bring the rankings up to date.

The number of historical tournaments coming off the rankings for each new published ranking week starting on 2 August 2022 will vary, based on the calendar at that time, however, the average is approximately nine tournaments per new publication week.

Thank you for your patience and understanding through these past two years with the BWF World Rankings, and we look forward to returning to our normal systems in short order.


Contact

Please contact Christopher Trenholme, Head of Technical Events Management, at [email protected] with any questions.