Overview
Basketball's world championship for national teams, held every four years with 32 nations.
The FIBA Basketball World Cup is the world championship for men's national basketball teams, contested every four years by 32 nations. A women's World Cup runs on its own cycle.
Qualification is played in home-and-away windows over two years, a format introduced in 2017 that brought competitive international basketball into the club calendar. The tournament moved off the Olympic year in 2019 so the two events no longer compete for attention.
Season Format
Recent Champions
Most recent first. Seasons still in progress are marked.
History
The first World Championship was held in Argentina in 1950. For four decades it was contested largely by amateurs and dominated by the United States, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Brazil; professionals were admitted in 1994.
The competition was renamed the World Cup in 2014 and moved to a non-Olympic year from 2019. Germany's undefeated run to the 2023 title, beating the United States in the semi-finals, was the first world championship for a nation that had never previously reached a final.
Governance
FIBA, based in Mies, Switzerland, is the world governing body for basketball and organises the World Cup, the continental championships and the Olympic tournament.