Birmingham is set to build on the legacy of the Commonwealth Games by being named as the host of the 2026 European Athletics Championships. The news could be confirmed as soon as Friday after the city’s only rival, Budapest, told European Athletics that it was withdrawing from the bidding process.
However the Guardian understands that at this stage it may be purely a standalone athletics competition – and not part of the wider multi-sport European Championships format that proved so successful in Glasgow and Berlin in 2018 and in Munich this summer.