World 100m hurdles champion Ditaji Kambundji has been confirmed for the Meeting International Mohammed VI in Rabat on 31 May, becoming the latest reigning world title-holder added to a Wanda Diamond League field that is rapidly turning into one of the strongest on the early-season calendar. The Swiss hurdler, who took the global crown indoors before completing a sprint hurdles double on the European stage, will face a sharpened Diamond League pack on a Moroccan track that has historically produced fast times once the night cools.
The Kambundji confirmation follows earlier announcements that Olympic 3000m steeplechase champion Soufiane El Bakkali, Olympic 800m champion Emmanuel Wanyonyi and world pole vault champion Katie Moon will all line up at Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium. World championship discus winner Valarie Sion and 1500m world indoor silver medallist Isaac Nader are also signed up, giving the third leg of the 2026 Diamond League season a level of star power organisers will be keen to convert into ticket sales for the meet's expanded grandstand seating plan.
For Kambundji, Rabat is a chance to lay down an early marker against a Diamond League field that has been building all winter. The Bernese hurdler arrived at her world title in clean form, but the bend-into-stagger geometry of the season opener will draw a fresh group of challengers, including the depth that has been emerging from the United States NCAA circuit. Pre-race interest will also focus on her starting block work, the area she pinpointed as the difference between a fast first hurdle and a winning one.
El Bakkali's appearance gives the meet its traditional home-soil headliner. The Moroccan steeplechaser is expected to slot into a 3000m steeplechase that should be the loudest event of the night, with Wanyonyi anchoring the men's 800m and Moon vaulting in a women's pole vault that has become one of the deepest annual events on the circuit. Together with Kambundji's hurdles, the four headline events form a quadrant of reigning world champions that few one-day meetings outside the Diamond League final can currently match.
The Rabat fixture sits at a sensitive point in the calendar, three Diamond Leagues into the season but still six weeks before the Stockholm fixture and the build to the World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest at the end of the summer. With the Doha leg now pushed back to 19 June, the Mohammed VI Meeting effectively functions as the third major opportunity for athletes to bank Diamond Trophy points before the European stretch begins. Kambundji's coach has flagged it as a controlled but sharp race-pace test, and on a circuit running this densely, that is starting to look like the safest entry point of all.