“It’s a big stew, but it still has to go down easy”: How World Climbing cooked up its 2027 calendar
Paris is back on the World Cup circuit. Tokyo and Los Angeles are joining the season. Other cities have been left off the menu. World Climbing’s new 2027 calendar says a lot about what the federation is cooking up for the future of international competition climbing. And for Vertige Media, Sports & Events Director Vincent Caussé shares the secret sauce.
For the past year, the man who helped orchestrate climbing competition operations at the Paris Olympics has been working in a new setting. After joining World Climbing, Caussé left his hometown of Grenoble for Turin, home to the international climbing federation. From there, he has just coordinated one of the most consequential announcements of the fall for competition climbing: the release of the 2027 international calendar. Fourteen World Climbing Series stops across four continents. A World Championships in Brno, Czech Republic. A record para climbing season. And, for the first time in several years, Paris, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Shanghai all on the schedule.
World Climbing’s September 30 announcement highlighted two kinds of destinations: “iconic cities,” meaning major global cities, and “historic locations,” places that helped shape the sport. Those big cities now sit alongside Innsbruck, Austria; Chamonix, France; Bern, Switzerland; and Koper, Slovenia. Behind that split is a process Caussé sums up simply: “It’s kind of one giant puzzle.”
Tokyo, Paris, LA: Climbing heads to the big city
“Big cities, like in any other sport, are an incredibly effective showcase.” One of Caussé’s first comments on the phone gets straight to the logic behind some of the 2027 calendar’s biggest choices. The “iconic cities” strategy serves two goals: getting more media exposure in key markets and reaching the growing population of urban climbers. According to World Climbing’s Sports & Events Director, commercial climbing gyms in major metropolitan areas are what have driven the sport’s explosive growth over the past decade. Bringing competitions to those cities means putting the sport in front of people who are already hooked — and potentially winning over everyone else.
“There are often compromises,” Caussé says. “Sometimes the fit isn’t as clean as we’d ideally like.”
Vincent Caussé, Director of Sports and Events at World Climbing
For French fans, Paris is the headline. The capital has not hosted an event on the world circuit since the 2016 World Championships at Bercy. Last April, World Climbing Secretary General Piero Rebaudengo — who also happens to be Caussé’s boss — told Vertige Media that a Paris stop was “something that will happen sooner or later.” It is now official: Paris will host a bouldering event, the ropeless discipline, in September 2027. The exact venue, however, has not been announced. On that front, Caussé chooses his words carefully.
“Discussions are still ongoing. We’re working with the FFME [the French climbing and mountaineering federation]. It’s almost done, but there are still a few outstanding issues.”
An announcement should come “within two weeks.”
Los Angeles and Tokyo complete a trio of Olympic host cities — Tokyo 2021, Paris 2024 and LA 2028 — appearing together on the same World Cup calendar for the first time. In Los Angeles, the Olympic climbing venue will not be available in 2027. The site is temporary and will not be built until the Games. Instead, the World Cup stop will primarily give LA28 organizers a chance to get familiar with the particular demands of running a climbing competition. Climbing is still relatively new to the Olympics, and it comes with its own logistical needs: route setters, the people who build the competition climbs; boom lifts; and constant route-setting work even while the event is underway. Tokyo, meanwhile, will be one of three cities hosting a direct Olympic qualification event in 2028, alongside Shanghai and Orlando, Florida.
Inside the calendar kitchen
Building the calendar means solving an equation with a lot of moving parts. “There are often compromises,” Caussé says. “Sometimes the fit isn’t as clean as we’d ideally like.” World Climbing has to match a destination and a date with the constraints facing each local organizer and the federation’s own priorities — all while working around major events already occupying key parts of the year. There are the European Games in Istanbul in June, the Pan American Games in Lima in July and August, the World Championships in Brno in August, and four continental qualifiers in the fall, in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and China. The available windows shrink quickly. The compromises pile up.
Caussé describes it as a game of “musical chairs” among organizers. Some have plenty of flexibility on dates and venues. Others are locked into fixed constraints. He compares his job to running a kitchen crew that has to keep a very big pot from becoming too much to digest, while also dealing with new ingredients being added along the way. World Climbing’s athletes’ commission, which has been gaining influence inside the federation, was briefed on the calendar before it was released but has not yet been directly involved in building it. That will change beginning in 2028. And because the athletes were already hungry for details, Caussé gave them an early taste. The reaction? “Pretty enthusiastic about adding these new cities,” he says.
For the next Olympic cycle, from Los Angeles 2028 through Brisbane 2032, World Climbing’s goal is to lock in 70 to 80 percent of the calendar with returning organizers committed to multi-year agreements. Athletes would also be brought into the process earlier instead of simply being informed once the calendar is essentially finished. It is a change in approach that recognizes an often-overlooked reality: the international calendar is the backbone national federations use to build their own domestic circuits. When it moves, everything moves with it.
Heat at climbing’s “Disneyland”
Even a calendar built around compromise will inevitably draw fire. On social media, much of the criticism has focused on Madrid, scheduled for July — one of the hottest times of year in the Spanish capital, where temperatures regularly climb above 104°F. Caussé does not dodge the issue. It is “definitely not the best time of year,” he acknowledges. But political elections in Spain in the spring ruled out other options, he says. That leaves adaptation: finals scheduled on Spanish time, qualification rounds adjusted to avoid the hottest part of the day, and a north-facing wall. “We went through Barcelona this summer. We’re not going to do the same thing again,” Caussé says
“We’re moving forward. We’re just moving forward differently.”
Vincent Caussé, Director of Sports and Events at World Climbing
Then there is the carbon footprint of a circuit traveling across four continents in less than a year. Here too, Caussé says the federation had to be pragmatic. The Asian stops have been grouped together at the beginning of the season — Tokyo, Keqiao, Shanghai, Wujiang and Gunsan, from April into early May — to limit repeated long-haul flights. Major cities also come with an unexpected advantage on that front: much larger local audiences, potentially reducing how far spectators need to travel.
The other source of tension is the disappearance of historic venues from the main circuit.
Briançon, in the French Alps, invested in a high-quality competition wall and previously hosted World Cup events, but it has been absent from the schedule since 2024. In the Instagram comments under World Climbing’s announcement, several people complained that the federation was focusing so heavily on big cities that the circuit risked “turning into the Disneyland of climbing.” Caussé argues that every sport hears the same complaints as it develops. “If social media had existed 20 or 30 years ago, the Serre-Chevalier Masters would have gotten the same comment.” His broader answer has two parts. First, World Climbing works primarily with national federations, which make their own decisions about how international events fit alongside local venues that want to stay involved. Second, the European circuit — whose 2027 calendar was expected to be released within days — could create new international opportunities for cities like Briançon. “It’s also a new opportunity for stops like Briançon, which could absolutely return to the international stage,” Caussé says. His conclusion is simple: “We’re moving forward. We’re just moving forward differently.”
