World Athletics has confirmed the list of exceptional invitations for the inaugural Ultimate Championship in Budapest on 11-13 September, and the headline decision concerns the men’s 1500m. Both Josh Kerr, the 2023 world champion who set a mile world record of 3:42.66 in London in July, and Jakob Ingebrigtsen, the 2021 Olympic 1500m champion, have been added to a final that was already set to feature 2024 Olympic champion Cole Hocker and 2025 world champion Isaac Nader.
Accommodating both required the organisers to break a rule they had written themselves. Exceptional invitations were capped at one per discipline for the first edition, but the steering board concluded that the race could not credibly be presented as a gathering of the best in the world without both men on the start list. The field will therefore be expanded to 13, with prize money allocated to 13th place on the same basis as every other event — US$5,000 — rather than the extra athlete running for nothing.
Kerr’s statement acknowledged the friction that has surrounded his season without dwelling on it, saying he had made choices that generated noise but had always wanted to prove himself in the biggest races against the best in the world. Ingebrigtsen, who already held an automatic invitation to the 5000m as reigning Olympic champion in that event, will now double in Budapest. His response was characteristically brief: he likes racing, and he tries to do as much of it as he can. The rivalry between the two has been conducted as much in press conferences as on the track, and a 13-lane 1500m final with four global champions in it is about as direct a settlement as the format allows.
The third headline invitation went to Gianmarco Tamberi in the men’s high jump. The Italian, a world and Olympic gold medallist, most recently won his fourth European title with 2.32m in Birmingham, and he returns to the venue where he took the 2023 world crown. Six further exceptional invitations were issued to Hungarian athletes and teams as hosts: Patrik Enyingi over 400m, Luca Kozák in the 100m hurdles, Sára Mátó in the 400m hurdles, Boglárka Takács in the 100m and 200m, and both the 4x100m and 4x400m mixed relay squads. Each Hungarian invitee is guaranteed US$1,000, added to their disciplines rather than displacing a qualified athlete.
The Ultimate Championship is World Athletics’ attempt to build a championship where the qualifying route runs exclusively through winning — world champions, Olympic champions, Diamond League winners and the year’s top-ranked athletes — supported by a US$10 million prize pot. The exceptional invitation mechanism exists to patch the obvious gap in that logic, namely that an athlete can be among the very best without holding one of the specific titles the format recognises. Expanding a final to fit two of them is a reminder that the system is still being calibrated in public.