Diamond League
Final

One Night, One Trophy

The Diamond League Final is the last meeting of the Diamond League season and the only one that hands out titles. Through the summer, the best athletes in the world collect points at the regular meetings; the leaders of each points table go through to the final, and there the slate is wiped clean. Whoever wins the race or the competition on the night is the Diamond League champion, whatever happened in May, June and July.

In 2026 the final was held over two nights, 4 and 5 September, at the King Baudouin Stadium in Brussels, with all 32 disciplines on the programme. Each winner took home the Diamond Trophy and US$30,000, or US$60,000 in the eight Diamond+ disciplines, which carry double prize money. Second place paid US$12,000 and US$20,000. The champions also earned a direct place at the World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest the following week.

From Double Points to Winner Takes All

The series began in 2010 with a different idea of a final. Titles were decided by a points race, the Diamond Race, across the whole season, and points were doubled at the last two meetings, in Zurich and Brussels, each of which settled half of the 32 disciplines. In 2010 the first 16 champions were crowned in Zurich on 19 August and the other 16 in Brussels eight days later. An athlete could lose the final and still win the trophy on points.

That changed in 2017. The regular meetings became qualifiers and the final became the only race that counted, still split between Zurich and Brussels, with US$100,000 on offer in each discipline. Shaunae Miller-Uibo won the 200 m in Zurich and the 400 m in Brussels that year, two Diamond Trophies in one season. In 2020 there was no final at all: the pandemic cut the season back to stand-alone meetings with no points.

When the final came back in 2021, it came back whole. Zurich staged all 32 finals in one city on 8 and 9 September, the first night on the Sechseläutenplatz, the square in front of the opera house, where even the 5000 m was run on a temporary 560 m track, and the second at the Letzigrund. Zurich hosted again in 2022. In 2023 the final went to Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, on 16 and 17 September: the first final outside Europe, and so far the only one. A May 2022 agreement then fixed the rotation: Brussels in 2024 and 2026, Zurich in 2025 and 2027.

The Nights the Clock Broke

Finals are run for titles, not times, but a few of them have produced both. On 7 September 2012 in Brussels, at the last meeting of the season, Aries Merritt ran the 110 m hurdles in 12.80. He had won Olympic gold in London a month earlier, and the run took seven hundredths off the 12.87 Dayron Robles had set in 2008. The 12.80 lasted almost 14 years. On 10 June 2026, at the NCAA championships in Eugene, Ja'Kobe Tharp ran 12.75.

Eugene's turn came on 17 September 2023, the second afternoon of the first final held in the United States. Gudaf Tsegay of Ethiopia ran the 5000 m in 14:00.21, a world record, and later the same day Armand Duplantis cleared 6.23 m in the pole vault, the seventh world record of his career. Neither mark stands today. Beatrice Chebet ran 13:58.06 on the same track at the Prefontaine Classic in July 2025, and Duplantis has kept raising the bar himself, to 6.31 m in Uppsala on 12 March 2026, his 15th world record.

Brussels 2026, the 50th Van Damme

The 2026 final was also the 50th edition of the Memorial Van Damme, Brussels' meeting since 1977. It carries the name of Ivo Van Damme, the Belgian who won silver in both the 800 m and the 1500 m at the Montreal Olympics in 1976 and died in a road accident on 29 December that year, aged 22. A group of Belgian sports journalists led by Wilfried Meert founded the meeting in his memory the following summer. The wider Belgian story is in our history of athletics in Belgium.

The two nights produced four meeting records. Emmanuel Wanyonyi of Kenya won the 800 m in 1:41.80; Audrey Werro of Switzerland won the women's 800 m in 1:54.75, six hundredths ahead of Femke Broeders-Bol; Faith Cherotich won the steeplechase in 8:51.61; and Alison dos Santos closed the meeting with 46.70 in the 400 m hurdles. Busang Collen Kebinatshipi of Botswana won the 400 m in 43.40, Oblique Seville the 100 m in 9.90 and Kenny Bednarek the 200 m in 19.62. Birhanu Balew ran an Asian record of 12:45.70 to win the 5000 m.

One streak ended without a jump. Duplantis, the pole vault champion at every final from 2021 to 2025, withdrew before the competition, and Emmanouil Karalis of Greece won his first Diamond League title with 6.12 m. A week later, the Brussels winners were in Budapest for the Ultimate Championship. How the money from a night like this compares with the rest of the sport is in our guide to prize money in track and field.

A Final Is Still a Meeting

That puts the final in the same wardrobe as the rest of the circuit: the Nike Pro Elite line, adidas, and the team kits of the professional groups. The athlete-issued versions of that kit, the Pro Elite pieces made for the athletes and not for the shops, are what the rail below holds, one piece per line.

Meeting-night kit · in the archiveNike Pro Elite 2012 Women Distance Crop TopAthlete-issued race kit from the Nike Pro Elite line — the sponsor issue that Diamond League nights are run in, never sold at retail.80,00 €View piece →