The World Aquatics has announced a three-stop Swimming World Cup Series for 2024 that will take place in Southeast Asia. This decision comes after the 2023 series, which took place in Europe and the 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 compact three-meet series appears to be a response to an increasingly crowded international swimming calendar. Since its peak of 12 stops around the turn of the century, the number of stops has decreased. 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.

Incheon, host of the 2014 Asian Games, is a new addition to the World Cup Series. Shanghai and Singapore have hosted previous events. In 2023, Qin Haiyang of China won the men’s series while Kaylee McKeown of Australia won the women’s title. It is worth noting that China sent most of its elite swimmers to the 2023 World Cup Series immediately after the Asian Games, which could have been a precursor to this decision to hold all three meets in Southeast Asia for 2024.