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100 Judo Worldwide,
Düsseldorf, Germany, a potential destination for the return of the IJF World Judo Tour.

Germany eyes a World Judo Tour comeback

Germany has a rich history on the IJF World Judo Tour, but one important piece has been missing since 2020. The country that produced Olympic and world champions in almost every generation has not hosted a Grand Slam or Grand Prix for six seasons, and with the Tour now spread over four continents, the question is no longer whether a German event would be welcome, but where and with whose money it could return.

From Hamburg to the ISS Dome

German judo was part of the Tour from the very start. Hamburg hosted the Super World Cups before 2008 and the first Grand Prix of the new World Judo Tour in 2009. Düsseldorf took over in 2010 and hosted the Grand Prix every year until 2017. In 2018 the event was upgraded to a Grand Slam and moved into the ISS Dome, a multi purpose arena for 14,000 spectators, with live coverage on Sport1. The fields grew with the status: 683 athletes from 97 countries registered in 2019, and around 700 judoka from 120 nations came in 2020. German Judo Federation president Peter Frese said at the time that it was harder to win a medal in Düsseldorf than at a world championship.

Then the run ended. There was no Grand Slam in 2021 because of the pandemic, and the edition planned for June 2022 was cancelled mainly for financial reasons, as the German Judo Federation informed the IJF. Since then Germany has had no place on the senior World Tour calendar.

A tougher market for hosts

The calendar Germany would return to looks very different from the one it left. In 2026 the Grand Slam circuit ran from Paris to Tbilisi, Tashkent, Dushanbe, Ulaanbaatar, Budapest and Abu Dhabi, and Lausanne staged its first ever Grand Slam in August. Several of those hosts treat a Grand Slam as part of a wider strategy for tourism, national visibility and international positioning, with government ministers present at the opening and public money behind the budget. Western European organisers, who depend more on federations, cities and commercial partners, now compete with that model for the same dates.

North Rhine-Westphalia still has the strongest case in Germany. It is the most populous federal state, Düsseldorf sits in the middle of the Rhine and Ruhr region with an international airport and rail links in every direction, and the region has hosted the European Championships in 2003, eleven World Tour editions in Düsseldorf and the German championships in Duisburg in June 2026, which the state premier opened in person. The arena, the clubs and the volunteers who ran the Grand Slam are still there.

A return would matter well beyond one weekend. German judoka would collect ranking points in front of their own crowd, clubs would have a showcase for recruitment and sponsors, and spectators in the most densely populated part of the country would see the world’s best without travelling to Paris or Budapest. Nothing has been awarded and no agreement with the IJF has been announced, but if Germany wants its place on the Tour back, Düsseldorf is where the conversation starts.