Nairobi enters race for 2029 World Athletics Championships against London, Rome and Munich

Image by IOC

Athletics Kenya submitted Nairobi's formal application to host the 2029 World Athletics Championships on Monday, entering a four-city contest against London, Rome and Munich for an event that has never been staged in Africa. The bid's commercial vulnerability is not demand for the sport. It is that Kenya's only usable venue is a building the government is still behind on.

Kasarani, the 48,000-seat Moi International Sports Centre is the intended venue. It is also one of the two primary match venues for the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations, which Kenya co-hosts with Tanzania and Uganda next June and July, and it has been closed for refurbishment since February. The other AFCON venue, the 60,000-seat Talanta Sports City, is football-only and has no track - which leaves Kasarani as the official venue.

In March, the State Department for Sports put the total cost of renovating AFCON match and training venues at Sh15.11 billion ($117 million), of which Sh3.74 billion ($29 million) had been paid, an outstanding balance of Sh11.37 billion ($88 million) that the Sports, Arts and Social Development Fund said it could not cover. The Treasury released a further Sh4 billion ($31 million) in June, with President William Ruto committing Sh29.4 billion ($227 million) in the Finance Bill 2026 to AFCON preparations. Kenya has won 72 world titles, second only to the United States, and 39 Olympic golds. At Tokyo 2025 it finished second on the medal table with seven golds among 11 medals, six of the golds won by women. Nairobi has staged the World Under-18 Championships in 2017 and the World Under-20s in 2021; Mombasa held the World Cross Country Championships in 2007.

Eliud Kipchoge has been fronting the campaign. "The only gift that the world can give Kenya is to accept and give us the chance to host the World Championships in 2029. It will be a huge moment for Kenya and for Africa," he told a virtual media briefing with Athletics Kenya.

World Athletics will name the 2029 and 2031 hosts after the inaugural Ultimate Championship in Budapest on 11–13 September. Awarding two editions at once lets World Athletics give Europe a commercially safe slot and Africa a historic one without choosing between them - and Nairobi's rivals are all in mature rights markets with venues already built. London and Munich in particular cost the governing body nothing in delivery risk. Africa has so far been offered: age-group championships, cross country, and a two-day relays meet in Gaborone this May, the first World Athletics Series event held in Botswana.

Kenya’s athletics economy is an export business, the value created by Kenyan runners is realised in Chicago, Berlin, London and on the Diamond League circuit, with Athletics Kenya capturing almost none of the gate, hospitality or broadcast revenue those performances generate. Hosting is the only mechanism that puts a global athletics P&L inside Kenya's borders, and the government's AFCON spending has already built most of what a championships would need.

Kenya's argument is that four decades of dominance have earned it the event. World Athletics has spent those same four decades selling the sport on Kenyan performance without paying Kenya to host it.