BWF World Tour Finals 2023: Dates & Location

City Express News Yesterday, the draw ceremony for the 2025 Badminton World Tour Finals was held in Hangzhou.

This event will start from December 17th to 21st at the Hangzhou Olympic Sports Center Gymnasium, bringing together the world’s top players to compete for the highest honor of the year. The Chinese badminton team has obtained full qualifications in four events: men’s singles, women’s singles, women’s doubles, and mixed doubles.

1. Can the new world championship Shi Yuqi defend his title?

In the men’s singles arena, Shi Yuqi and Li Shifeng, the two main players of the national badminton men’s singles, are in Group B. They will meet in advance in the group stage.

This season, Shi Yuqi performed strongly, ranking seventh in only 8 BWF World Tour events, winning 3 Super 1000 and 1 Super 750 championships. In the men’s singles competition of the World Championships, he staged a “reversal legend” all the way to promotion and finally won the championship. With 112,047 points, he secured the first place in the world ranking at the end of the 2025 season in advance. He became the first Chinese men’s singles player to simultaneously achieve the two milestones of “year-end world number one” and “points exceeding 100,000 points”, setting a new historical record for personal and national badminton men’s singles.

2. Can the “Chinese Derby” be staged again?

In the women’s singles arena, two young Chinese feather girls, Wang Zhiyi and Han Yue, are also in the same group.

In the women’s singles competition of last year’s finals, Wang Zhiyi and Han Yue advanced to the finals together. In the end, Wang Zhiyi reversed Han Yue’s loss after losing a set first, and won the women’s singles championship for the first time in the finals. Wang Zhiyi won three championships this year, including one Super 1000. Han Yue has four runner-up finishes this season.

In the 2025 season, An Xiying is the favorite to win the women’s singles and has won 10 BWF Tour championships this season. However, her championship luck in the year-end finals does not seem to be good. The last time she stood on the top podium was in 2021.

3. The only seedling “Liang Wang” appears again

The men’s doubles event has become the only individual event in the national badminton that failed to reach full participation. Liang Weikeng/Wang Chang secured a spot with their stable performance.

In 2023, Liang Weikeng/Wang Chang participated in the finals for the first time and won the runner-up; in 2024, “Liang Wang” won the men’s doubles silver medal at the Paris Olympics, but failed to qualify for the finals that year. In 2025, the pair competed for points at each stop and eventually advanced to the finals. The “Liang Wang” who won the Hong Kong Open Championship in China this season has played three finals and is the only Chinese men’s doubles player to have won a championship on the Badminton World Tour this season. At the same time, the world championship champions, the Korean combination Kim Won-ho/Seo Seung-jae, are also eyeing the championship trophy.

4. The “War of Revenge” is about to begin

In the women’s doubles, Liu Shengshu/Tan Ning and Jia Yifan/Zhang Shuxian all advanced successfully. This is the first time they have appeared in Hangzhou as World Championship champions. This season’s “Altar” combination has won 4 BWF World Tour championships. Since the restructuring in 2018, Jia Yifan has stood on the highest podium of the year-end finals in 2019, 2022 and 2023. This year’s finals will be the first time that Jia Yifan and Zhang Shuxian will appear together.

In last year’s finals, both pairs of Chinese women’s doubles players stopped in the semi-finals. In this year’s “Battle of Revenge”, the “Altar” combination and Jia Yifan, who changed partners, achieved a breakthrough.

5. The combination of “Phoenix” and “Jiang Wei” will face strong opponents

The national badminton team in the mixed doubles event is fully qualified, and the combinations of Feng Yanzhe/Huang Dongping and Jiang Zhenbang/Wei Yaxin are in good condition.

Feng Yanzhe/Huang Dongping returned to the year-end finals after two years. The “Phoenix” combination stood on the Badminton World Tour championship podium 7 times this season. They are the mixed doubles combination with the most championships. Their strong opponent is the Thai combination Dechapol/Supisara who stood on the top podium 5 times this season.

Jiang Zhenbang/Wei Yaxin qualified for the year-end finals for the second consecutive year. Since the China Masters in mid-September, Jiang Zhenbang/Wei Yaxin has reached the semi-finals in 4 of the 5 tournaments they participated in and entered the finals 3 times.

In last year’s finals, the mixed doubles championship was won by Zheng Siwei/Huang Yaqiong. This year, the goal of the national badminton team is still to keep the championship trophy in China.