The eighth edition of the World Athletics Relays will be staged at the Botswana National Stadium in Gaborone on Saturday and Sunday, the first time the biennial championship has been held on African soil. World Athletics confirmed final entries on Monday, with 723 athletes from 40 nations competing across the 4x100m, 4x400m, mixed 4x400m and shuttle hurdles relay disciplines. Five days out, the storylines are crystallising fast — and so is the heat in southern Africa, with daytime forecasts touching 32C across the weekend programme.
Letsile Tebogo will headline the Botswana team in front of a sold-out home crowd. The 200m Olympic champion, whose family home is a 30-minute drive from the National Stadium, has been entered in both the 4x100m and the mixed 4x400m for the host nation. Botswana's chief executive of athletics has confirmed Tebogo will run an opening-leg double on Saturday and an anchor leg in Sunday's relay finals, scheduling that the team's coaches admit is "ambitious" but reflects how rare a home global championship is for a generation of Botswana athletes.
Canada's Andre De Grasse and Jamaica's Shericka Jackson are the other star names confirmed in the entry book. De Grasse will run the 4x100m for Canada in what is his first race of the outdoor season, and Jackson — coming back from a calf strain that ruled her out of the World Indoor Championships in March — has been named on Jamaica's 4x400m roster rather than the 4x100m, an indication of where her early-season fitness is. Olympic 4x100m champions the United States, France and Great Britain are also fielding their A-teams, with both Beijing 27 World Championships and the inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest later this summer offering automatic places to the top finishers in each event.
The 4x400m mixed relay arrives in Gaborone with the deepest field in its short history. The United States, Netherlands, Great Britain and France all have podium-quality teams, and the Dutch can call on Femke Bol on the women's anchor — her first international relay appearance of the outdoor year. The shuttle hurdles relay, the relays format introduced in Nassau in 2024 and retained for Gaborone, has 12 entered teams; the United States, France and Jamaica are the obvious finals contenders, but a host-nation Botswana team has been entered for the first time and will benefit from a noisy home crowd in the warm-up rounds.
The Gaborone event also serves a wider purpose for World Athletics. The federation has invested in upgraded infrastructure at the National Stadium and is using the championship as a showcase for the African athletics market in the run-up to the 2027 World Championships in Beijing. President Sebastian Coe is due to attend both days. Saturday's session begins at 17:00 local time with the 4x100m heats; finals run on Sunday from 18:30. Coverage in the United Kingdom will be on the BBC Red Button, with worldwide streaming via the World Athletics YouTube channel.