The cards to be used in the 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.^[1] The championship has taken place annually since 1991, with the exception of 1992.^[2] 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.^[3] From 2017 onward, both organizations have hosted their own world championships.

The current WMSC world champion is Munkhshur Narmandakh of Mongolia.^[4] The current IAM world champion is Andrea Muzii of Italy.^[5]

Format

The World Championships consist of ten different disciplines, where the competitors have to memorize as much as they can in a period of time:

1. One hour numbers (23712892....)
2. 5-minute numbers
3. Spoken numbers, read out one per second
4. 30-minute binary digits (011100110001001....)
5. One hour playing cards (as many decks of cards as possible)
6. 15-minute random lists of words (house, playing, orphan, encyclopedia....)
7. 15-minute names and faces
8. 5-minute historic dates (fictional events and historic years)
9. 15-minute abstract images (WMSC, black and white randomly generated spots) / 5-minute random images (IAM, concrete images)
10. Speed cards - Always the last discipline. Memorize the order of one shuffled deck of 52 playing cards as fast as possible.

Venues 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	Bahrain	Gunther Karsten
17	2008	Bahrain	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	Hainan	Jonas von Essen
24	2015	Chengdu	Alex Mullen
25	2016*	Singapore	Alex Mullen

IAM world champions (2017–present)[edit] # 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 WMSC world champions (2017–present)[edit] # Year Venue Winner Combined Rankings 26 2017 Shenzhen Munkhshur Narmandakh Non-Champion 27 2018 Hong Kong Wei Qinru Champion 28 2019 Wuhan Ryu Song I Champion 29 2020 Karachi§ Emma Alam - 30 2021 Ulaanbaatar§ Munkhshur Narmandakh -

• * – 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.^[6]

• § – Athletes generally competed in their respective countries given COVID-19 restrictions, with results combined to determine the world champion.

Records

Up-to-date lists of world and national records can be found on the statistics websites of the IAM^[7] and WMSC.^[8] 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	630 digits	Andrea Muzii	IAM MemoryXL German Championship 2021
Spoken numbers	547 digits	Ryu Song I	WMSC World Championship 2019
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)	975 points	Xu Yangran	WMSC World Championship 2021
5-minute random images (IAM)	547 points	Yolan Cohen	IAM Swedish Open Championship 2021