Para sport governance

The shape of it

Para sport governance looks confusing because it is the product of a merger that is still running. Three layers overlap.

The IPC sits at the top: it owns the Paralympic Games, publishes the Classification Code, and recognises the federations. National Paralympic Committees are the territorial layer — the sole representative of the Movement in each country, holding the exclusive right to enter athletes in the Games. And the international federations run the sports.

Most Para sports are run by the same federation as their Olympic counterpart: the UCI for Para cycling, the FEI for Para equestrian, the ITTF for Para table tennis, World Archery, World Rowing, World Taekwondo, World Triathlon and others. The IPC recognises 18 federations governing 20 Para sports — fourteen Olympic-and-Paralympic federations and four Paralympic sport federations.^[1] [2]

Alongside them sit three international organisations of sport for the disabled, which are not sport federations but impairment federations: IBSA for blind and vision-impaired sport, Virtus for intellectual impairment, and World Abilitysport, formed by the 2023 merger of CPISRA and IWAS. They matter because for two impairment groups, eligibility begins with them and not with the sport. An athlete cannot be classified into an intellectual-impairment class in athletics or swimming until they appear on the Virtus eligibility master list.^[1]

Why the IPC is a federation at all, and why it is trying to stop

Historically the IPC ran the sports itself because there was nobody else to run them. Olympic federations had no Para programme, and the impairment-specific organisations were organised by impairment rather than by sport. The IPC filled the gap and then kept it.

The structural objection is straightforward: the body that owns the Games, recognises the federations and writes the classification code should not also be one of the federations it recognises. The IPC's own governance review concluded as much, and the answer was written into the Constitution.

Article 21.1: "The aim is for all IPC Sports to separate from the IPC by no later than 31 December 2026." Article 21.2 states the interim position — until a sport separates, the IPC is its international federation and the NPCs are its national federations. Article 22 created the World Para Sports Unit, an operationally independent internal division with its own board, staff and managing director, to run the exit: it approves each sport's leaving plan, its structure, budgets, calendars, qualification criteria and rules until separation, and the terms of each transfer agreement. It disbands when the last sport has gone.^[3]

The Unit's board was constituted in April 2023 with five members and a four-year term, and at that point governed six sports: Para athletics, Para dance sport, Para ice hockey, Para powerlifting, Para swimming and shooting Para sport.^[4]

What has actually transferred

Five transfers have completed, each with its own announcement:

• 2006 — Para equestrian to the FEI, and Para cycling to the UCI.
• 2007 — Para table tennis to the ITTF.
• 2022 — three Para snow sports (alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, snowboard) to the FIS, and Para biathlon to the IBU.
• 1 January 2024 — Para dance sport to World Abilitysport, announced 14 November 2023.

One further transfer is signed but not complete. Shooting Para sport to the ISSF, agreed on 24 April 2026, takes effect only after ratification by ISSF member federations at a General Assembly in late 2026; subject to that, the ISSF assumes governance "from early 2027", with a deliberately slow two-year integration across 2027 and 2028 so that LA28 qualification is not disturbed.^[5] [6]

What has not transferred, and where it stands

As at 29 August 2026 the IPC states that it governs five sports. Four of them have no announced successor.

Para athletics and Para swimming. The process started in July 2021 with a call for expressions of interest that drew twelve responses, followed by a formal request for proposals with submissions due in April 2022. On 13 June 2023 UK Sport and the British Paralympic Association were named preferred partners, with Manchester proposed as the home of two new independent federations and exclusive negotiations running to 31 August 2023 — the announcement said the IPC would cease to govern the two sports "no later than 31 December 2026".^[7]

Then, on 6 June 2025, the IPC reopened the process. Its own wording: "The process of transfer of governance of Para athletics and Para swimming was initiated in 2021 with a first phase of EOIs followed by a period of exclusive negotiations with the City of Manchester and UK Sport. While discussions with the UK partners remain ongoing, negotiations are no longer exclusive and other interested organisations are encouraged to submit their proposals." Expressions of interest closed on 27 June 2025. No successor has been announced since.^[8]

Para powerlifting. No IPC announcement has ever named a receiving body. Its rulebook still states that the IPC is the international federation and that "WPPO" is to be read as the IPC.^[9]

Para ice hockey. Likewise unassigned.

The honest summary, four months from the constitutional date: one of five sports has a signed destination, and it is awaiting a ratification vote. Article 21.1 is drafted as an aim precisely because this was foreseeable, and its own fallback clause hands the remainder back to the General Assembly.

What sits above and beside

Two relationships are worth stating because they are routinely assumed to be something they are not.

The IPC is not part of the IOC. They are separate organisations with a long-standing agreement under which the Paralympic Games follow the Olympic Games in the same host city, and the host contract covers both. The IPC recognises its own members, runs its own General Assembly, elects its own President and writes its own code.

The NPC is not always the national federation. Where a sport has an independent international federation, the national federation for that sport is the national body affiliated to it — a cycling federation for Para cycling, for instance. Where the IPC still acts as the international federation, Article 21.2.2 makes the NPC the national federation by default. That is why an athlete's paperwork in one Para sport may come from a body that has nothing to do with their paperwork in another. More on the registration layer.^[3]

Anti-doping runs on the ordinary architecture: the IPC is a signatory to the World Anti-Doping Code and operates its own anti-doping programme for the sports it governs. More on that.