The Artistic Gymnastics World Cup is a competition series for artistic gymnastics sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG). It is one of the few tournaments in artistic gymnastics officially organized by FIG, as well as the World Championships and the gymnastics competitions at the Olympic Games and the Youth Olympics. Beginning in the 2017-2020 quadrennium, the All-Around and Individual Apparatus World Cup series are used to qualify a maximum of seven spots to the Olympic Games.
History
The Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG) hosted the first artistic gymnastics on an international scale in 1975. This genre of sport from then onwards was named as the Artistic Gymnastics World Cup, an original competition reserved for the current best gymnasts. It was composed of a single and unique event, bringing together very few gymnasts in all around competition and in apparatus finals. This initiative was taken in a particular context, since the world championships took place merely every four years. The world cup event held every year for artistic gymnastics was, however, upheld only until 1990.
In 1997, the World Cup was revived as a series of qualifying events for a period of two years, culminating in a final event that was known as the World Cup Final. The different stages, sometimes referred to as World Cup qualifiers, mostly served the purpose of awarding points to individual gymnasts and groups according to their placements. These points would be added up over the two-year period to qualify a limited number of athletes to the biennial World Cup Final event. Six World Cup Final events were staged in even years from 1998 to 2008. For example, the World Cup Final competition in 1998 served as the last stage of a series of competitions through the 1997–1998 season. At the World Cup Final, gold, silver and bronze medals were awarded to individual athletes in each apparatus.
Eight standalone World Cup events had been staged from 1975 to 1990, and FIG retroactively named these events World Cup Final. The gymnasts were invited to these world cups based on results from the previous world championships or Olympic Games. From 1997 to 2008, the World Cup series of qualifying events were the only way athletes could qualify for the World Cup Final. At the FIG Council in Cape Town (South Africa) in May 2008, members decided to no longer run any world cup and series finals for all FIG disciplines from January 2009.
In 2011, the apparatus competitions were renamed World Challenge Cups while the all-around competitions kept the World Cup name. In 2013, FIG created three distinct competition series with the reintroduction of the Individual Apparatus World Cup series, along with the existing All-Around World Cup series and the World Challenge Cup series.
Current format
Beginning in 2009, the World Cup has been competed strictly as a series of stages with no culminating final event. In each of the stages, the top three gymnasts in each apparatus or the all-around, depending on the type of competition, are awarded medals and prize money. There are currently three separate series run by the FIG: the All-Around World Cup series (C-II), the Individual Apparatus World Cup (C-III) series, and the World Challenge Cup series. For the All-Around World Cup series, gymnasts' standing counts toward their countries' final placement. For the latter two series, gymnasts' standing counts toward their own individual ranking, and they do not pool results with their teammates.
The two individual apparatus series are open to all athletes and are especially popular among athletes from countries with smaller gymnastics programs. The All-Around World Cup series, however, is an invitation-only series of competitions for the top countries at the previous year's World Championships or Olympic Games. Each of the eight competing countries at any given cup has the option to choose any one gymnast to compete with the exception of the host country, which has a wild-card spot for a second gymnast.