The eighth edition of the World Athletics Relays opens at Botswana National Stadium in Gaborone this Saturday, the first time the championship has been held on African soil and the first standalone World Athletics event ever staged in Botswana. Forty-three federations have entered teams across the six relay events on the programme — men's and women's 4x100m, men's and women's 4x400m, the mixed 4x400m and the mixed 2x2x400m short relay introduced in 2024 — with each finalist earning a quota place at the World Athletics Championships in Beijing in September 2027 and at the inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest later this year. Two days of racing across Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon will close the world's qualification window for relay events.
The host federation has built its medal hopes around its men's 4x400m squad, which won 4x400m bronze at the Tokyo 2025 World Indoors and silver at the World Championships in Tokyo. Botswana's selection includes Letsile Tebogo on the back end, the world 200m and 100m champion, in what will be his first 4x400m race for his country since 2024. The home nation has also entered the mixed 4x400m and the mixed short relay, where reigning Olympic 400m hurdles silver medallist Oratile Nowe will run the second leg. Botswana will be one of only two nations entered in all six events, alongside the United States.
USA Track & Field has named an 18-athlete squad that conspicuously omits the marquee sprinters who would normally headline the men's 4x100m. Sha'Carri Richardson, Noah Lyles, Gabby Thomas and Kenny Bednarek are all skipping Gaborone in favour of personal preparation for the Diamond League season and the Ultimate Championship; the federation has also declined to enter full men's and women's 4x400m teams, citing athlete availability and the cost of African travel ahead of the LA28 cycle. The men's 4x100m squad of Pjai Austin, Ronnie Baker, Brandon Carnes, Kyree King and Courtney Lindsey is competitive without being decorated, leaving Jamaica, Great Britain and South Africa with realistic gold-medal scenarios.
The women's 4x100m looks the deepest event of the meet. The Jamaican selection of Briana Williams, Tia Clayton, Tina Clayton and Shericka Jackson will go up against a US quartet built around World Indoor 60m bronze medallist Aleia Hobbs, with the British team of Daryll Neita, Amy Hunt, Imani-Lara Lansiquot and Bianca Williams aiming for a top-three finish that would secure them quotas for the World Indoors as well as Beijing. The mixed 4x400m, an event the United States, the Netherlands and Belgium have dominated since its 2019 introduction, may turn instead on whether the Dominican Republic — running with both Marileidy Paulino and Anabel Medina — can deliver in front of an African crowd.
For Gaborone, the championship represents the second of three major sporting hosting opportunities the city has secured in 2026, following the African Games in March and ahead of the World Indoor Athletics Tour Final in November. World Athletics president Sebastian Coe, who arrives in Botswana on Friday after attending the London Marathon, has framed the meet as proof of his federation's commitment to staging events outside its traditional European and US footprint. Tickets for both finals sessions sold out three weeks ago and the Botswana government has confirmed that the meeting will be broadcast free-to-air across Africa via the African Union Sports Council. Racing begins at 18:35 local time on Saturday with the men's 4x100m heats.