FITA was founded on 4 September 1931 in Lwow,
Poland (today
Lviv,
Ukraine). Its seven founding member states were France,
Czechoslovakia, Sweden, Poland, the United States, Hungary, and Italy. The aim of the organization was to create regular archery championships, and to return archery to the
Olympic Games (the sport had not been featured since 1920). FITA was finally successful in returning archery to the Olympic program in the
1972 Summer Olympics. To celebrate the organization's 80th anniversary in July 2011, a large majority of the FITA Congress voted to change the name from FITA to the World Archery or WA. In March 2022, in the wake of the
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the federation announced that no athlete, team official, or technical official from Russia or Belarus will be permitted to participate in any international archery event, their flags and anthems are banned, and no archery events would be held in the two countries. In July 2023, on the question that whether or not to re-allow athletics with Russian and/or Belarusian passports to participant international archery competitions under neutral identities, World Archery asked both national archery federations to submit personal data for investigations, as both federations denied to complete such requirements, WA said that it's unlikely to allow neutral athletes unless once procedure can be completely followed. In December 2023, World Archery launched its own
OTT Service with a
subscription video on demand model and live streaming of main events. The organization announced in 2024 that the 2025 world cup final would be held in
Nanjing, China before moving to Mexico for 2026 through 2028. ==Identity==