China to host Badminton World Tour finals in December after two-year break

The season-ending World Tour Finals, scheduled for Guangzhou from December 14th-18th, will feature the top eight players and pairs in each category with a prize pool of $1.5 million, the biggest the event has ever offered, the BWF said.

BWF Secretary General Thomas Lund said the finals were one of the body's most lucrative tournaments and thanked the Chinese government for extending the invitation.

"Unfortunately, it was not possible to move forward with plans to stage the two tournaments in Changzhou and Fuzhou,” he added, without further explanation.

November's Hong Kong Open had already been cancelled for the third straight year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and complex quarantine measures.

The World Tour Finals were relocated in 2020 and 2021 due to Chinese COVID restrictions.

China significantly tightened its COVID-19 policies this year to contain the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant.