World Athletics Championships will return to RTÉ television for the first time this century, the nine-day event taking place in Tokyo in September, and the biggest sporting stage in the world this year.

About 2,000 athletes from some 200 countries will compete in the 20th edition of the championships, which take place from September 13th-21st – the second time Japan has hosted the event after Osaka in 2007, and Tokyo previously in 1991. The National Stadium, rebuilt for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, will be the venue.

RTÉ have not secured any television rights in Ireland since the 1999 World Athletics Championships in Seville, but this time the national broadcaster is set to schedule live coverage of each of the nine evening sessions in Tokyo, which take place between 10.30am and 2.30pm Irish time.

There will also be studio analysis from Sonia O’Sullivan, Rob Heffernan and Derval O’Rourke, and it continues from RTÉ’s extensive coverage of the European Indoor Championships in Apeldoorn last month, and the European Championships in Rome last June.

RTÉ did provide live coverage of the event throughout the 1990s, when O’Sullivan was at the peak on her running powers, including the 1997 World Championships in Athens, the last time RTÉ had full coverage, with studio analysis by Bill O’Herlihy with John Treacy and Eamonn Coghlan. For the 1999 championships in Seville, there was a 30-minute highlights package with commentary from Jimmy Magee.

Virgin Media broadcast live coverage of the last World Athletics Championships in Budapest in August 2023, returning the event to Irish terrestrial television for the first time since Seville.

After securing the Irish rights to the Diamond League last year, Virgin will again provide live coverage of the 15 meetings this summer, starting in Xiamen in China this Saturday. The second meeting in Shanghai on May 3rd is set to feature Rhasidat Adeleke, who will then lead the Irish team at the World Relays in Guangzhou in China, on May 10th-11th, where Adeleke is named in both the mixed 4x400m and women’s 4x400m.

The top 14 in each event in Guangzhou are automatic qualifiers for Tokyo. Six Irish athletes have already secured automatic qualifying times for Tokyo: Adeleke (200m/400m), Sharlene Mawdsley (400m), Sarah Healy and Sophie O’Sullivan (both 1,500m), Sarah Lavin (100m hurdles) and Andrew Coscoran (1,500m).

The qualification cut-off date for most events is not until August 24th, at which point Ireland could have its largest number of qualifiers in World Athletics Championships history. The Tokyo schedule includes four morning sessions, reduced from previous championships, which take place in the early hours of the morning Irish time, but with the evening sessions featuring all the major finals.