The World Aquatics has announced a three-stop Swimming World Cup Series for 2024 that will take place in Southeast Asia. The series follows a 2023 event held in Europe and a 2022 series with stops in North America and Europe. The three meets will be held in Shanghai, China from October 18-20, Incheon, South Korea from October 24-26, and Singapore from October 31 to November 2.
The decision to hold a compact three-meet series seems to be a response to an increasingly crowded international swimming calendar. The series has seen a decrease in the number of stops since its peak of 12 around the turn of the century. The 2024 post-Olympic series will also return to its traditional short course meters format in preparation for the 2024 World Short Course Swimming Championships in Budapest, Hungary.
China’s Qin Haiyang and Australia’s Kaylee McKeown won the men’s and women’s series, respectively, in 2023. It is noted that China sent most of its elite swimmers to the 2023 World Cup Series right after the Asian Games. This could have been a foreshadowing of the decision to have all three meets of the series in Southeast Asia for 2024. Incheon, the host of the 2014 Asian Games, is a new city in the World Cup Series while Shanghai and Singapore have hosted previous events.