World Blind Sports Day Date in the current year: April 24, 2025

Visual impairment is one of the most common disabilities; in 2015, 940 million people worldwide had some degree of vision loss, 246 million had low vision, and 39 million were blind. Like any disability, visual impairment imposes certain limitations, including participation in sports. However, blind and partially sighted people can still participate in various sports such as athletics, skiing, and swimming. Some sports have been adapted or invented specifically for the visually impaired. These include beep baseball, blind cricket, blind football (football 5-a-side), blind golf, blind tennis, goalball, showdown, and torball.

Visually impaired people first participated in the Paralympic Games at the 1976 Summer Paralympics in Tokyo, where goalball was first included as an official medal sport. Goalball is a team sport for visually impaired athletes, played by teams of three using a ball with bells inside. It has no equivalent for sighted athletes.

Paralympic sports specifically for visually impaired athletes include football 5-a-side, goalball, and para judo. Paralympic sports in which visually impaired athletes compete alongside athletes with other disabilities include athletics, bandminton, climbing, cycling, equestrian, rowing, shooting, swimming, taekwondo, triathlon, alpine skiing, biathlon, and cross-country skiing.

Many sports for blind and partially sighted athletes use a medically based classification that allows for fair competition. Athletes in class B1 are totally or almost totally blind, athletes in class B3 have partial vision with visual acuity from 2/60 to 6/60, and athletes in class B2 have visual acuity that falls between the other two classes. B1 and B2 athletes are required to use a sighted guide in certain sports.

The International Blind Sports Federation was founded in 1981 as the International Blind Sports Association (IBSA). The following year, IBSA and three other organizations of sports for the disabled formed the International Co-ordination Committee of World Sports Organizations for the Disabled, the forerunner of the International Paralympic Committee. The International Blind Sports Association became a federation in the early 2000s, but kept its old acronym.

IBSA’s mission is to promote the full integration of blind and partially sighted people into society through sport and to encourage them to take up and practice sports. It serves as the international federation for several sports for visually impaired people, including three Paralympic sports (blind football, goalball and para judo), chess, ninepin and tenpin bowling, powerlifting, showdown and torball.

World Blind Sports Day was launched in 2021 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of IBSA and to raise awareness of sports for people with visual impairments. Its main objective is to emphasize that sports are for everyone, even if they do not plan to compete at an elite level.