A World Championship is the highest level competition in our sport, the best athletes are qualified and invited. The event has to be managed by a local member or partner organization of the ISA who is also responsible for managing and funding the event. 

Here are some of the ISA criterias for World Championships:

• The best international athletes should be present
• A minimum of 17 Athletes must participate (11 male/ 6 female) per discipline
• A minimum of 60% international participation from at least 3 continents
• Professional judging
• Besides prequalification through the Ranking List there needs to be an open seeding (Wildcard) for athletes to join
• A minimum 3 day event length with training, qualifications and finals
• A minimum of 5000 Euro prize money per discipline
• The finals must be video recorded and there must be a live feed
• The event needs to be communicated at least 6 months in advance
• Source and details

The Flims Laax Highline World Championships are organized on a volunteer basis by an association called Swiss Slackline Sport, represented by Thomas Buckingham (CEO) and Nina Mappes (COO). The event is further supported by the Swiss Slackline Federation, Swiss Highline, Grischa Slack and the ISA Sport Commission.

With these world championships we are at the forefront of the professionalisation of two disciplines (speed and freestyle highline), constantly rethinking and revising on how to make our sport better, fairer and safer. Such rules and regulations have to comply with local prerequisites, such as the spot and the event budget distribution. Against this background the rules keep developing and changing.

There is only a small group of volunteers, working constantly, holding regular meetings,  revising and improving the rules and regulations. The contest regulation document is now five years old and has been revised approximately multiple times, the third version has just been published (v3.0). Little is set in stone, feedback is given on a daily basis by judges, athletes and of course the wider public. We take all constructive inquiries seriously and adapt the regulations where the overall quality and fairness is improved:

Find the rules and regulations linked here.

Changelog

Version 3.0, Feb 2026: Shared publicly online and with the qualified Athletes

The judges have been nominated by the Swiss Slackline Federation and were approved by the ISA Sport Commission. No internationally recognised judging system, judging education or qualification exists thus far. They have been under development for many years but are not ready yet. There are several competing judging systems for different slackline disciplines, which are being developed by small groups and organizations. The ISA Sport commissions keeps evaluating these on a constant basis.

The female and male winners of the Highline World Championships of 2024 in Freestyle, Speed Highline and Combo (Freestyle&Speed) are automatically qualified to defend their World Championship titles.

The ISA Ranking list is the basis for the vast majority of selections. It takes into account all results of relevant slackline competitions around the world within the last three years at the cutoff date of the 31. of December 2025. 

The ranking list guarantees a transparent selection and ensures athletes have proven their ability to perform in competitions. The ranking is based on summing up an athlete’s two best competition performances at relevant, larger competitions from the past 3 years.

In addition to ranking list qualifications we make a smaller number of selections via Wild Cards, for newcomers/rookies or athletes which have yet to join competitions and therefore have not made it into the ISA ranking list. This process began on the 12th of February and ended on the 28th of February 2025. The results were published mid beginning of March 2026.In addition, the best Swiss Athletes were automatically qualified, because the competition takes place in Switzerland, the funding is solely from Switzerland and the public viewers and audience are mostly Swiss. Some Swiss athletes also have a double role, acting as active volunteers at the event helping with onsite organization, rigging, logistics and communication.

There are several factors which dictate the number of athletes we are able to invite include:

• The event is limited to four days (+1 weather backup day, since wind and storms are possible at this time of the year)
• The daylight window is limited, the conditions have to be the same for all, there is not sufficient artificial lighting available
• The competition area is in the middle of a lively town, we can’t extend the operating hours at our will
• We must provide training and acclimatization sessions of about 40 min each, and qualification takes around 15 min per athlete

In 2022, 31 Athletes were present and we managed to complete the event within schedule (with perfect weather). Laax 2024 invitations have been increased to 42, which was a huge challenge, requiring 18-20 hour work days over 4-5 days for the judges, organisation team and riggers. In the case of bad weather, the training and acclimatization time will be limited, unfortunately diminishing the quality of the athlete performances. In other words, every minute on the lines from the morning sunrise to evening is planned out during this event and there is simply not enough time to accommodate more athletes.

Due to significantly reduced funding compared to previous editions, the event budget does not allow us to cover travel, food, or accommodation for athletes this year. This was a difficult decision, but it enables the World Championships to take place rather than be cancelled.

We want to acknowledge clearly that this model does not affect all athletes equally. Competitors traveling long distances or coming from regions with weaker currencies face substantially higher barriers to participation. We recognize that this creates structural disadvantages within our global community, and improving accessibility remains an important goal for the future of the sport.

In many established sports, athletes receive financial support through national federations, public institutions, sponsorship structures, or dedicated funding programs. Slacklining is still developing these systems worldwide, and comparable support mechanisms are not yet consistently available.

At the same time, events of similar scale in other sports often require participation fees. We have deliberately chosen not to introduce such fees, as we do not want financial means alone to determine who can compete.

To help reduce financial barriers, the organizing team will promote a community crowdfunding initiative and prioritize distributing funds to athletes with the greatest financial need. However, this support will likely cover only a portion of the actual travel costs.

We remain committed to learning from this edition and working toward more sustainable and equitable funding structures for future championships.

We invite the maximum number of athletes given our organizational constraints and we do not offer additional entry spots through paid participation, as this would compromise competitive fairness and disadvantage athletes without the financial means to do so.

The prize money is funded by the Swiss Slackline Association through separate fundraising conducted in the freetime of some volunteers and not provided by our main sponsors.

The following criterias were taken into consideration:

Conditions and Price: Last but not least the conditions we got from the manufacturers to purchase the gear was taken into consideration.

ISA Safety Label – the gear needs to be ISA approved, this means it was independently tested by a third party laboratory after the ISA Standards for Gear (Webbing, Weblocks, Leashes, etc).

Top Performance: The gear needs to be suitable for high performance at the world championship level. This primarily concerns the webbings and leashes.

Rigging and Safety: The gear needs to be safe to use. This for example means we choose advanced Leashring padding, a Trick-zone on Freestyle webbing, non-slippery surfaces for Speed and intermittent connections along the highlines between main- and backup to reduce forces and fall height.

Adjustability: A crucial criteria for freestyle athletes is the possibility to choose their tension before a run. This concerns mainly the tensioning and release equipment and forcemeters used by the riggers onsite. Further the Leash length needs to be adjustable to the body sizes and preferences of athletes.

Availability of Gear: The gear chosen needs to be available and accessible in many places around the world so athletes can prepare and train, this mainly concerns the webbing.

The gear has not yet been chosen.