The 2026 Wanda Diamond League season ended on Saturday night with seven meeting records at the 50th Allianz Memorial Van Damme, a second day of the Final in Brussels that doubled as the last chance for athletes to secure a place at next week's inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest. Coming a week after the world records set by Alison dos Santos and Masai Russell in Zurich, the King Baudouin Stadium produced a card that was deeper rather than louder: sixteen Diamond Trophies were decided, and in several events the winner had to produce a lifetime best to take one.
The race of the night was the women's 800m. Audrey Werro of Switzerland erased Pamela Jelimo's 18-year-old meeting record but had to hold off Femke Broeders-Bol all the way to the line, the Dutch athlete finishing just six hundredths behind in only her first season over two laps. Broeders-Bol, twice a world champion over 400m hurdles, has improved in each race she has contested since switching events, and the pair will meet again in Budapest, where Keely Hodgkinson, who withdrew from Brussels, is expected to complete the field. In the women's 1500m, Poland's Klaudia Kazimierska took a second and a half from her personal best to win in 3:54.05, a world-leading meeting record, beating Dorcus Ewoi (3:54.72) and Jessica Hull (3:54.73) and reversing the result of last month's European final in Birmingham, where Georgia Hunter Bell had taken gold. Hunter Bell was fourth.
Dos Santos closed the night with the last of the seven records, gliding to a third Diamond League 400m hurdles title in five years in 46.70. The previous meeting mark of 47.51 had been set by Andre Phillips exactly 40 years earlier, and the Brazilian finished 1.33 seconds clear of Trevor Bassitt while looking as though he had more in reserve for Budapest, where each individual winner earns US$150,000 from a $10 million prize pot. Russell could not repeat her Zurich heights but still ran a meeting record of 12.20 to win the 100m hurdles from Devynne Charlton (12.33) and Megan Simmonds. Marileidy Paulino claimed a fourth Diamond League 400m title, and her first since 2024, with 48.64, more than half a second ahead of Henriette Jaeger.
In the field, Jamaica's Rajindra Campbell produced the throw of the season in the shot put. Having set a personal best of 22.59m in Brescia last week, he improved to 22.62m in round two before launching a final-round 23.08m that broke the Jamaican record, the meeting record and the world lead, and moved him to fourth on the all-time list. Andy Diaz Hernandez opened the triple jump with 17.74m to beat Christian Taylor's seven-year-old meeting record, and nobody else in the six-man field came close. Hana Moll won a third consecutive Diamond League pole vault in a fortnight, clearing 4.91m at the third attempt before failing at a meeting-record 4.96m, while Eleanor Patterson beat Yaroslava Mahuchikh for the second competition running with the only clearance of 2.01m in the high jump. Sri Lanka's Rumesh Tharanga Pathirage won a 12th javelin competition in 13 outings with 89.04m, and Yan Ziyi kept her unbeaten season intact with a meeting-record 68.42m in the women's event.
On the track, Kenny Bednarek matched his world-leading 19.62 to win the 200m, with Olympic champion Letsile Tebogo only fifth and needing to find form before Budapest. Tina Clayton was the only woman under 11 seconds in the 100m, winning in 10.93 from European champion Amy Hunt and Sha'Carri Richardson. In the distance events, Bahrain's Birhanu Balew kicked away on the last lap of the 5000m to win in an Asian record of 12:45.70, taking more than two seconds off the world lead in a race where the top six all finished inside 12:50, and 20-year-old Ethiopian Gemechu Godana broke Soufiane El Bakkali over the final lap of the steeplechase, 8:08.67 to 8:10.03. With the Diamond League now complete, the season's final act moves to Budapest on 11 to 13 September.