This month, the world’s best 14-18-year-old divers will aim for glory at the 2026 World Aquatics Junior Diving Championships in Rijeka, Croatia. Here are 8 things to know.
WHAT/WHEN: The World Aquatics Junior Diving Championships will feature 17 finals over 8 days, from August 21-28.
WHERE: The events will be held at the outdoor Kantrida Swimming Pools, in Rijeka, which also hosted the 2023 Junior European Championships. The venue is right next to the Adriatic Sea. Except for the first day, in which three champions will be crowned, every day will feature two finals – one for girls and one for boys.
WHO: The talent will be diverse, representing 46 nations from Australia to Uzbekistan. The largest team will be from the United States (21 divers), followed by Canada (18). Eleven divers will compete for the host nation, Croatia.
AGE RULES: The individual events are age specific, so divers will vie for medals the 1m, 3m, and platform competitions in either the older A group (for ages 16-18) or the younger B division (ages 14-15). Athletes competing in synchro and the mixed team event can come from either age group. In any case, all the divers at the 2026 Junior World Championships will have been born between 2008 and 2012.
WHO’S BACK: Since the junior world championships are held every two years, most of the older divers age up to the senior level by the time the next edition is held. There is one diver, however, who captured a bronze in the A group at the last edition in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, who will compete again in the A group here: Tereza Jelinkova of Czechia. In 2024, she placed third on girls’ 3m springboard.
In addition, 17 athletes who won medals in the B group last time will try to make the podium in the A group this year. They include Mexico’s Rut Paez who captured three golds in Rio, in girls’ 1m, 3m, and synchro platform (plus a silver in the individual platform). Paez’s four-medal haul comprised half of Mexico’s total and put the nation second on the medal chart, behind Ukraine. Other returning multiple medalists include Germany’s Finn Awe who swept boys’ 1m and 3m gold in Rio; Australia’s Maggie Grey (girls’ platform gold, team silver); American Kayla Jensen (girls’ team gold, 1m silver); and the trio of stars from Ukraine: Kseniia Bochek (girls’ 3m synchro gold, 1m bronze, team bronze), Mark Hrytsenko (boys’ platform gold, team bronze), and Valerii Malieiev (boys’ 3m silver, 1m bronze).
NOTABLE ABSENCE: ElliReese Niday of the US was looking forward to making her junior world championship debut Croatia, but the 14-year-old who placed fourth against the world’s best 10m senior divers at the 2026 World Cup Super Final in May, is recovering from a broken vertebrae.
SCORING: It is important to note that in the individual events, the 12 divers who make the final cut will NOT start with a clean slate. Instead, final rankings will take into account their preliminary-round scores for the dives that had a limited degree of difficulty plus all their scores from the final. The athlete who has the highest combined score will be the winner.
INTERESTING FACT: The ship Carpathia that famously saved 705 passengers from the sinking Titanic was en route to Rijeka (then known as Fiume) when it received the distress call in the middle of the night on April 15, 1912.