The 2026 athletics season reaches its climax this weekend with the Wanda Diamond League Final in Brussels.
On Friday and Saturday at the Allianz Memorial Van Damme, the world’s best male and female athletes across 32 disciplines will compete to be crowned Wanda Diamond League champion, the first major global title of the year.
It is the 12th time that Brussels has hosted the Diamond League Final, and the city has delivered some iconic moments down the years.
Here’s a look back at six of the best Diamond League Final moments from Brussels.
Aries Merritt breaks the world record
US sprint hurdler Aries Merritt headed into the 2012 Diamond League Final in the form of his life, having just won Olympic gold at London 2012 with a personal best of 12.92. The then 28-year-old went one better in Brussels, storming to an unprecedented 12.80 to take the series title and shave 0.07 seconds off Dayron Robles’ world record. It was the first world record ever broken at a Diamond League meeting and it proved to be one of the most enduring. While Robles’ previous best of 12.87 had lasted just four years, Merritt’s mark stood until June 2026, when Ja’Kobe Tharp set a sensational 12.75 at the NCAA Championships. Tharp, incidentally, is expected to make his first ever Diamond League Final appearance in Brussels on Friday.
Barshim jumps 2.43m
Brussels almost saw another world record two years later, when Ukraine’s Bohdan Bondarenko and Qatar’s Mutaz Essa Barshim delivered one of the greatest high jump competitions in living memory. Bondarenko had won three Diamond League meetings en route to the final, setting a new series record of 2.42m in New York, and he looked set to take the title as he sailed to 2.40m with just four jumps and a perfect card. Yet Barshim had a surprise up his sleeve, clearing 2.43m at the first attempt to wrest control of the competition from the Ukrainian. The jump was the second highest in history, and saw Barshim take the first of his three career Diamond League titles to date. Though he and Bondarenko both failed to clear Javier Sotomayor’s world record at 2.46m, it was still a night that would change the men’s high jump forever.
Morris clears five metres
With 56 appearances and 14 wins in the series, US pole vaulter Sandi Morris is one of the most prolific competitors in Diamond League history. The greatest moment of her career so far came at the Diamond League Final in Brussels in 2016, when she became only the third athlete in history to break the five-metre mark with a winning jump of 5.00m. Under the old league format, the win wasn’t enough to prise the title away from Greek rival Katerina Stefanidi, but it did cement Morris’ status as one of the greatest pole vaulters of all time. The mark stood as a Diamond League record until 2021, though Morris said recently that she feels closer to five metres now that any point since that jump. “I believe it’s there: for me it’s not an if, it’s a when,” she said in Zurich last week.
Hill’s last-gasp triumph
In a field stuffed with global champions such as Ryan Crouser, Joe Kovacs and Tom Walsh, US shot putter Darrell Hill was an outsider at best going into the men’s shot put at the Diamond League Final in 2017. Sure enough, the American remained well off the lead for much of the competition in Brussels’ city centre, and was still down in fifth at the beginning of the final round. Yet with his last roll of the die, Hill pulled out the throw of his career, landing a meeting record of 22.44m to snatch the title away from Crouser and claim one of the most sensational late wins in Diamond League history.
Ibargüen’s daring double
From 2010 to 2019, Brussels was a co-host of the Diamond League Final alongside Zurich, and in 2018, the two meetings were held on consecutive days for the first time. For most athletes who compete in more than one discipline, that meant a choice of going to one city or the other. But not for Caterine Ibargüen. At the height of her world-beating form, the Colombian star leapt to her fifth triple jump title in Zurich on August 30, before immediately travelling to Brussels to compete in the long jump on August 31. Astonishingly, she also emerged victorious in her second discipline, becoming the first athlete to win two Diamond League titles in the space of two days. Though Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Shericka Jackson would repeat the feat in Eugene five years later, Ibargüen remains the only double champion to have won two titles in two cities on back-to-back evenings.
Kipyegon makes it five
Few athletes have dominated the Diamond League like Faith Kipyegon in recent years. The Kenyan won the 1500m title for four years in a row between 2021 and 2024, breaking five world records in the space of three years and taking her overall tally to 30 Diamond League wins and five Diamond League titles. Her most recent came in Brussels in 2024, when she stormed to a meeting record of 3:54.75, crossing the finish line with a triumphant five fingers raised in front of her. In the women’s events, only Sandra Elkasevic, Valarie Sion and Ibargüen have won more titles than Kipyegon.
