World Archery

Archery was first held as a sport at the 1900 Paris Olympics, only with men events. The sport’s international governing body was founded on 4 September 1931, in Lwów, Poland (today Lviv, Ukraine), as the Fédération Internationale de Tir à l’Arc (FITA), with seven founding members: France, Czechoslovakia, Sweden, Poland, the United States, Hungary, and Italy. The inaugural edition of the World Archery Championships took place right there in Lwów just before the federation’s creation, but only with men events. Just three years later, in the third edition of the World Archery Championships in London, Great Britain, women archers appeared for the first time at the global stage.

When archery returned to the Olympics after a long absence at München 1972, the first Olympic event for women archers was staged. In 2009, the Fédération Internationale de Tir à l’Arc identity was retired, and the organization was rebranded as World Archery. The label became the official name of the federation two years later, in 2011. By then, archery had already entered the programme of the Youth Summer Olympics, at its inaugural edition of Singapore 2010, with boys, girls, and mixed events.

Besides the Target Archery discipline contested at the Olympics, World Archery also governs the disciplines of Indoor Archery, Field Archery, and Para Archery. The latter has been featured on the programme of every Paralympic Games since its first edition, at Rome 1960, and was the only sport contested at the first Stoke-Mandeville Games in London in 1948, the forerunner of the Paralympics.

Greg Easton of the United States, son of former honorary president Jim Easton, became the president of the federation in 2025. World Archery’s headquarters are located in Maison du Sport International, in the Olympic Capital of Lausanne, Switzerland, and the federation has 165 member national federations as of January 2026.