World Memory Championships
Annual memory competition
The World Memory Championships is an organized competition of memory sports in which competitors memorize as much information as possible within a given period of time. The championship has taken place annually since 1991, with the exception of 1992. It was originated by Tony Buzan and co founded by Tony Buzan and Ray Keene. It continues to be organized by the World Memory Sports Council (WMSC), which was jointly founded by Tony Buzan and Ray Keene. In 2016, due to a dispute between some players and the WMSC, the International Association of Memory (IAM) was launched. From 2017 onward, both organizations have hosted their own world championships.
The current WMSC world champion is Naranzul Otgon-Ulaan of Mongolia. The current IAM world champion is Vishvaa Rajakumar of India.
01Format
The World Championships consist of ten different disciplines, where the competitors have to memorize as much as they can in a period of time:
- One-hour numbers (23712892....)
- 5-minute numbers
- Spoken numbers, read out one per second
- 30-minute binary digits (011100110001001....)
- One-hour playing cards (as many decks of cards as possible)
- 15-minute random lists of words (house, playing, orphan, encyclopedia....)
- 15-minute names and faces
- 5-minute historic dates (fictional events and historic years)
- 15-minute abstract images (WMSC, black and white randomly generated spots) / 5-minute random images (IAM, concrete images)
- Speed cards - Always the last discipline. Memorize the order of one shuffled deck of 52 playing cards as fast as possible.
02Venues and winners
World Champions (1991-2016)
| # | Year | Venue | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1991 | London | Dominic O'Brien |
| 2 | 1993 | London | Dominic O'Brien |
| 3 | 1994 | London | Jonathan Hancock |
| 4 | 1995 | London | Dominic O'Brien |
| 5 | 1996 | London | Dominic O'Brien |
| 6 | 1997 | London | Dominic O'Brien |
| 7 | 1998 | London | Andi Bell |
| 8 | 1999 | London | Dominic O'Brien |
| 9 | 2000 | London | Dominic O'Brien |
| 10 | 2001 | London | Dominic O'Brien |
| 11 | 2002 | London | Andi Bell |
| 12 | 2003 | Kuala Lumpur | Andi Bell |
| 13 | 2004 | Manchester | Ben Pridmore |
| 14 | 2005 | Oxford | Clemens Mayer |
| 15 | 2006 | London | Clemens Mayer |
| 16 | 2007 | Manama | Gunther Karsten |
| 17 | 2008 | Manama | Ben Pridmore |
| 18 | 2009 | London | Ben Pridmore |
| 19 | 2010 | Guangzhou | Wang Feng |
| 20 | 2011 | Guangzhou | Wang Feng |
| 21 | 2012 | London | Johannes Mallow |
| 22 | 2013 | London | Jonas von Essen |
| 23 | 2014 | Haikou | Jonas von Essen |
| 24 | 2015 | Chengdu | Alex Mullen |
| 25 | 2016* | Singapore | Alex Mullen |
WMSC world champions (2017-present)WMSC (World Memory Sports Council)
|
IAM world champions (2017-present)
International Association of Memory
| # | Year | Venue | Winner | Combined Rankings | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2017 | Jakarta | Alex Mullen | Champion | |||
| 2 | 2018 | Vienna | Johannes Mallow | Non-Champion | |||
| 3 | 2019 | Zhuhai | Andrea Muzii | Non-Champion | |||
| - | 2020 | Competition Not Held | |||||
| - | 2021 | Competition Not Held | |||||
| - | 2022 | Competition Not Held | |||||
| 4 | 2023 | Mumbai | Tenuun Tamir | Non-Champion | |||
| 5 | 2024 | Lund | Enrico Marraffa | Non-Champion | |||
| 6 | 2025 | Mumbai | Vishvaa Rajakumar | Non-Champion | |||
*, The 2016 World Championships was hosted by the WMSC and was the first world championship not recognized by the IAM, who did not host their own world championship that year.
- §, Athletes generally competed in their respective countries given COVID-19 restrictions, with results combined to determine the world champion.
03Records
Up-to-date lists of world and national records can be found on the statistics websites of the IAM and WMSC. The best of them are listed in the following table.
| Discipline | Record | Athlete | Event |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hour numbers | 4620 digits | Ryu Song I | WMSC World Championship 2019 |
| 5-minute numbers | 642 digits | Wei Qinru | IMO Korea Open Memory Championship 2024 |
| Spoken numbers | 660 digits | Hu Xueyan | WMSC World Championship 2024 |
| 30-minute binary digits | 7485 digits | Ryu Song I | WMSC World Championship 2019 |
| Hour cards | 2530 cards | Kim Su Rim | WMSC World Championship 2019 |
| Speed cards | 12.74 seconds | Shijir-Erdene Bat-Enkh | IAM Korea Open 2018 |
| 15-minute random words | 335 words | Prateek Yadav | WMSC World Championship 2019 |
| 15-minute names and faces | 224 names | Katie Kermode | IAM World Championship 2018 |
| 5-minute historic dates | 154 dates | Prateek Yadav | WMSC World Championship 2019 |
| 15-minute abstract images (WMSC) | 1048 points | Huang Jinyao | WMSC China Memory Championships 2022 |
| 5-minute random images (IAM) | 775 points | Enrico Marraffa | IAM French Open Memory Championship 2025 |
04Championships by country
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “World Memory Championships”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Memory Sports.jpg by No machine-readable author provided. Mahatma~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain
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