Ottawa to host the Wheelchair Basketball World Championships, Canada aims for home gold

The IWBF Wheelchair Basketball World Championships are being held in Ottawa, Canada, from September 9 to 19, 2026. They involve 336 athletes from 28 teams — 16 men’s and 12 women’s — representing around twenty nations. The event is described by organizers as the largest team sporting event in the world for elite athletes with disabilities.

The Canadian federal government has allocated 2.5 million dollars to Wheelchair Basketball Canada for organizing the event, as part of an overall investment of 1 billion dollars in national sport. The funding is part of a broader strategy through which Ottawa supports the hosting of major international sporting events on its territory.

The Canadian men’s national team qualified automatically as the host nation. In its group, Group A, it faces Brazil, China, Great Britain, Australia and Spain; at the previous World Championships, the team had finished sixth in Dubai in 2022, following a fourth-place finish at the 2025 IWBF Americas Cup in Bogotá.

On the women’s side, the Canadian national team has won the first three matches of its group, including victories over Australia and China. Canada’s most prestigious achievement in this discipline remains the men’s gold medal won in Amsterdam in 2006, while the most recent podium finish is the women’s gold won on home soil, in Toronto, in 2014. These are the two benchmarks the Canadian teams are looking to in the Ottawa edition.

The group stage was held from September 9 to 15; quarterfinals, semifinals and finals follow through September 19. Senator Chantal Petitclerc, honorary president of the event, said she was pleased to hold the role as a Canadian citizen and a multiple-decorated Paralympic champion.

Available sources do not yet report the results of the quarterfinals, which are scheduled to take place in the coming days of the event, with the medals to be awarded on September 19.