From 4 to 7 June, points will be awarded for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. An increasingly inclusive and innovative event: it opens with Para Taekwondo. Two thousand children in the Kim and Liù Tournament and the great news of Virtual Taekwond
Rome returns to the world capital of taekwondo and becomes a crossroads of the Olympic race towards Los Angeles 2028. From 4 to 7 June the Grand Prix Arena of the Foro Italico will host the Rome 2026 World Taekwondo Grand Prix, the first seasonal stage of the world circuit which brings the best international athletes and the great Italian champions back to the Capital. The event was presented today in the Ara Pacis Museum, in the presence of the leaders of the Italian Taekwondo Federation, World Taekwondo and representatives of the main national and Rome sports institutions. An increasingly inclusive event, open to the public and looking to the future.
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The event returns to Rome for the fifth time after the 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2023 editions, and will inaugurate the 2026 Grand Prix Series, before moving to Muju, South Korea (4-7 September), Paris, France (8-11 October), and Astana, Kazakhstan, for the Grand Prix Final (27-29 November). The event, open to the public without limitations and with totally free access, will offer fundamental points for both the World Ranking and the Olympic and Paralympic qualification ranking. The event will also be an opportunity to celebrate the 60th anniversary of taekwondo in Italy. An achievement that goes hand in hand with the first place achieved by the federation led by president Angelo Cito in the ranking of the Member National Associations of World Taekwondo.
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The 2026 edition will bring a total of 367 athletes to the Foro Italico, representing 57 countries, with numbers that also confirm the attention to gender balance. In fact, there will be 128 men and 128 women competing, to which will be added 61 men and 50 women in the World Para Taekwondo Grand Prix, integrated for the first time in the program of the Roman event. The opening day at the Foro Italico on 4 June will be dedicated to the Para Taekwondo competitions, where Antonino Bossolo, a leading figure of the Italian movement and the first Italian athlete to win a medal at the Paralympic Games in Paris 2024, is expected among the protagonists. On the opening day, the gaze also turns to the future with the Virtual Taekwondo Roma Open 2026, the first official international tournament of the virtual discipline: the athletes will compete through digital avatars and VR viewers, opening a new technological frontier for world taekwondo. From 5 to 7 June the station will be available to the public to experience the discipline for free by wearing visors.
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The president of World Taekwondo Chungwon Choue, the president of the Italian Taekwondo Federation Angelo Cito, the Minister for Sport and Youth Andrea Abodi, the president of CONI Luciano Buonfiglio, the president of CIP Marco Giunio De Sanctis spoke at the presentation press conference. Also present were the CEO of Sport and Health Diego Nepi Molineris and the councilor for Major Events, Sport, Tourism and Fashion of Rome Capital Alessandro Onorato. The Italian athlete Vito Dell’Aquila also participated in the presentation.
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“I am thrilled by the strength of the numbers and contents of this federation. I believe this harmony between mind, body and spirit is a formula that we must try to borrow, transferring it from taekwondo to the relationship between all of us. In the presentation of the Taekwondo Grand Prix there is the beauty of this event which is renewed the day after Republic Day and in the season of the sixtieth anniversary of the Federation”, said Abodi, who then recalled how Rome is “a palimpsest between sport, culture, art and entertainment. The city is preparing itself for increasingly demanding challenges in the hope that there will always be that institutional harmony that leads to a common love for the Capital”. The federal president Cito recalled how “For our champions and for the many growing young people it is the first step towards Los Angeles 2028, with an added value: gaining important points for the Olympic ranking in front of their own audience, at home. Today Italy is the first federation out of 215 affiliated to World Taekwondo, a result unthinkable until a few years ago, and the four podiums of the European Championships in Munich show that behind Vito Dell’Aquila and Simone Alessio it stands raising a generation ready to take the stage.”
La Gazzetta dello Sport
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