The road to the 2024 Paris Olympics begins in earnest February 2 to 18 with the 2024 World Aquatics Championships. Swimming, diving, water polo and artistic swimming will all crown a new set of world champions, while dozens of athletes set their sights on securing qualification for the Paris Games.

2024 Worlds marks the final scheduling anomaly in the domino effect that occurred when the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were postponed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally scheduled for November 2023, the World Championships in Doha now become the first edition of the event to take place during an Olympic year, as well as the first to take place during the winter.  As a result, Doha is likely to play host to several Olympic previews with the Paris Games under six months away.

Action from all 17 days of the World Aquatics Championships will air exclusively on Peacock. See below for detailed day-by-day schedules for each sport.

Diving leads things off in Doha and will take place February 2 to 15. All eight Olympic diving events will be contested, as well as several non-Olympic events – including the dramatic men’s 27m and women’s 20m high diving competitions.

The 2024 Worlds carry significant weight with respect to qualifying for the 2024 Paris Olympics. Fifty percent of all synchronized diving places and over 40 percent of all individual diving places will be on the line as athletes look to lock up quota spots for their respective nations.

The United States heads to Doha having already qualified a team for the men’s synchronized 3m springboard and women’s synchronized 10m platform events. The precocious pairing of Joshua Hedberg (17) and Carson Tyler (19) will attempt to secure qualification for the U.S. in the men’s synchro platform event while Tokyo 2020 veterans Alison Gibson and Krysta Palmer hope to do the same in the women’s synchro springboard. Though the U.S. is already qualified in the women’s synchro platform, Tokyo silver medalists Delaney Schnell and Jessica Parratto have sights set on adding another major competition medal to their collection after taking bronze at 2023 Worlds.

The U.S. is also hoping to round out its share of quota spots in the individual diving events. Team USA currently lacks one slot in the women’s platform and both slots in the men’s platform. American divers must finish among the top 12 competitors – not including those from nations already qualified – to secure those slots. (Note: A diver who earns an Olympic qualification slot for the U.S. must still compete at June's U.S. Olympic Diving Trials for the right to fill that slot in Paris.)

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The unique timing of the 2024 World Aquatics Championships has forced many Paris swimming hopefuls to make a difficult decision. Most elite swimmers orient their training so that they “peak” in time for the most important meet of the year. This year, that's the Paris Olympics (or, for some, Olympic Trials a bit earlier in the summertime). For that reason, several of the top stars in swimming – Katie Ledecky and Caeleb Dressel among them – have opted to forgo the World Championships in Doha in order to focus on training for Paris.

However, many other big names have embraced the challenge of two major meets in one year and will look to build some early-season momentum at Worlds. 2023 World Champions Kate Douglass and Hunter Armstrong headline the U.S. roster. The youth-laden lineup also features several exciting Paris hopefuls in Claire Curzan, Carson Foster, Michael Andrew, Shaine Casas and more.

International stars Sarah Sjostrom of Sweden, Adam Peaty of Great Britain, Daiya Seto of Japan and Ahmed Hafnaoui also head to Doha in search of bolstering their sterling resumes over the eight-day meet taking place February 11 to 18.

2024 Worlds will also feature a pair of 10k open water races key to shaping the field at the Paris Olympics. Thirteen of the 22 swimmers in both the men’s and women’s Olympic marathon swim will be determined based on the results in Doha. Katie Grimes, by way of winning bronze at the 2023 World Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, is already qualified for the U.S. in the women’s race. Michael Brinegar will swim the men’s 10k representing the U.S., aiming for a finish that would punch his ticket to Paris.
 

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                                                                                                       Click HERE for event-by-event schedules for each session

With 11 sets of medals up for grabs, artistic swimming at the World Aquatics Championships is significantly larger in scale than at the Olympic Games, where only two medal events are contested. Athletes compete at Worlds in non-Olympic solo events, as well as mixed duet events. However, the Olympic events (team and women’s duet) are still the main draw, especially with plenty of Paris qualifying implications at play. 

The United States is determined to send a full artistic swimming team to the Olympic Games for the first time since 2008, but to do so, it will have to place among the top five nations not already qualified for Paris at 2024 Worlds. Those already qualified nations are continental champions China, Australia, Egypt and Mexico, along with host nation France. (Russia, the six-time defending Olympic champions in the team event, are barred from competing at both 2024 World and the Paris Games due to the ongoing war in Ukraine.)

The U.S. team for Doha includes Bill May, the 45-year-old trailblazer and five-time world medalist. May hopes to become one of the first men to compete in artistic swimming at the Olympics when Paris marks the first Games where teams are permitted to include (up to two) male athletes. 

Having already qualified for the women’s duet competition in Paris, the U.S. did not enter any of its athletes to those events for Doha, opting instead for an all-hands-on-deck approach to the team competition. However, 19-year-old Kenneth Gaudet is slated to compete in the non-Olympic men’s solo events, looking to build upon his two-medal haul from the 2023 World Championships in Fukuoka, Japan.
 

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At the 2023 World Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, the United States women’s water polo team failed to win gold at a major tournament (Worlds or Olympics) for the first time in a decade. Not only that, the three-time defending Olympic champs didn’t leave with medals of any color, bowing out in the quarterfinal stage due to a 8-7 upset loss at the hands of Italy.

Decorated head coach Adam Krikorian’s team will no doubt be on a mission to start a new winning streak in Doha and regain momentum heading toward the Paris Olympics.

The U.S. men, on the other hand, are looking to build off a seventh-place finish at 2023 Worlds as they aim for the first World Championship medal in the team’s history.