2026 was another record-breaking year in the Wanda Diamond League.
The 17th season of athletics’ premier global one-day meeting series also proved to be one of the best ever, as a new generation of champions burst onto the world stage and attacked some of the sport’s oldest records.
So as the dust settles on another historic campaign, here are the key facts and figures from 2026.
Heartbeat of global athletics
With 15 meetings across four different continents throughout the outdoor season, the Diamond League has long been the beating heart of the international athletics’ calendar.
With no major championships in 2026, the series took on even greater importance than usual this season as the sport’s biggest global stage from May to September.
Broadcast in more than 180 territories and reaching a social media audience of 6.8 million followers and 1.7 billion impressions worldwide, it cemented its status as one of the most watched series in world sport.
The Diamond League was also a truly global series on the track in 2026, with 1097 participants from 93 different countries and 166 meeting winners from 41 different countries.
Those athletes also had more than ever to compete for this year, as the top prizes for individual victories rose to a record 60,000 USD and the overall prize money pool remained at a record high of 9.84 million USD.
Records fall
2026 was also a historic year on the track as some of the sport’s most unassailable records began to wobble and fall at Diamond League meetings.
The season saw a total of four world records, continuing a trend that has now produced a total of 20 world records in the last four seasons.
Josh Kerr’s 3:42.66 in the men’s mile in London toppled one of the longest-standing world records in athletics, 27 years after Hicham El Guerrouj’s previous world record from 1999.
Meanwhile, there were just 37 minutes between Alison Dos Santos’ and Masai Russell’s world records in the men’s 400m hurdles and women’s 100m hurdles in Zurich.
Those four world records were also among the 17 Diamond League records broken by athletes from 11 different countries in 2026.
Botswana’s Collen Kebinatshipi, Switzerland’s Audrey Werro and the USA’s Masai Russell all broke multiple Diamond League records throughout the season.
The 2026 season also produced 17 area records, 91 national records and 56 world-leading performances over the course of the campaign.
New wave of champions
There was a changing of the guard at the top in the Diamond League this year.
The 32 Diamond League champions in 2026 came from 18 different countries, including some which had never previously won a Diamond Trophy.
Sri Lankan javelin thrower Rumesh Tharanga Pathirage and Senegalese triple jumper Saly Sarr both became their country’s first ever Diamond League champion, while Yan Ziyi (javelin) and Feng Bin (discus) returned China to the champions’ podium for the first time since 2019.
In total, there were 21 first-time winners of the Diamond League title in 2026, as a new generation of stars began to storm the global athletics scene.
They included Pathirage in the javelin, world record breakers Ja’Kobe Tharp and Masai Russell in the sprint hurdles and the USA’s Hana Moll in the women’s pole vault.
