Read Time:2 Minute, 6 Second
The stage is set for the July 11 to August 3 World Aquatics Championships in Singapore, as the 4,800-seater World Aquatics Championships Arena (WCH Arena), located next to Leisure Park Kallang, was unveiled by organisers on Monday (June 16).
Completed in just five months, with foundation work beginning last December on what was previously an open-air car park, the newly constructed venue will host swimming and artistic swimming competitions. The OCBC Aquatic Centre will stage the diving and water polo events, while Sentosa’s Palawan Green will serve as the venue for high diving and open-water swimming.
Former national swimmer and co-chair of the Singapore 2025 organising committee Mark Chay declined to reveal the cost of the structure, but said the expenditure was “comparable” to what cities like Fukuoka and Doha spent to host the World Aquatics Championships in 2023 and 2024.
Ko Chee Wah, chairman of Kin Productions — the firm tasked with the planning and construction of the venue — described the tight timeline as a major hurdle. His team had previously supported events such as the WTT Singapore Smash 2025 and the FIDE World Chess Championship Singapore 2024, but this project presented a different scale of complexity.
“It was a big challenge. When we first came to the site, it was a big car park — 250,000 square feet. But because we had been planning for so long, we were not intimidated,” he said, citing studies conducted by the team on previous World Championship meets.
“Although the specification was to build a temporary structure, you cannot build a temporary structure when you are going to cater to the public… We have to provide a facility that is as safe as a permanent structure,” he added.
The competition pool measures 50 metres in length and 26 metres in width, with a depth of 3 metres — deeper than the pools that will be used at the Paris Olympics.
The upcoming championships will feature over 2,500 athletes across 77 medal events, while the World Aquatics Masters Championships, held concurrently, has already seen nearly 6,000 registered participants aged 25 and above.
Chay added that ticket sales have been “very positive”, with some of the more popular sessions already sold out.
Happy
0 %
Sad
0 %
Excited
0 %
Sleepy
0 %
Angry
0 %
Surprise
0 %
0
0
