Badminton World Federation

The International Badminton Federation (IBF) was formed on 5 July 1934 in London, Great Britain, with nine founding members – Canada, Denmark, England, France, the Netherlands, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland, and Wales – to govern the sport of Badminton internationally. In 1981, the IBF merged with another badminton organization, the World Badminton Federation.

The organization was renamed to its current name, Badminton World Federation (BWF), on 24 September 2006, at the Extraordinary General Meeting in Madrid, and has 204 Member Associations (including 13 Associate Members) as of January 2026. The organization’s head office is located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and its current President is Patama Leeswadtrakul of Thailand.

Badminton first appeared at the Olympic Games as demonstration events for men and women in both München 1972 and Seoul 1988. Events for both genders would début with full-Olympic status at Barcelona 1992, and they have remained on the Programme ever since. World Championships in the sport had first been staged by the then-IBF in 1977. Badminton has also been part of the Summer Youth Olympics since its inception, at Singapore 2010.

Para Badminton is also governed by the BWF. The discipline had its first World Championships in 1998 in Amersfoort, Netherlands, and it became a Paralympic sport at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. The BWF is also responsible for the newer non-Olympic variant of AirBadminton, which had its first World Cup in 2025, in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.