Laura Mautalen FRA was best lifter in the women's classic category at last year's World Bench Press Championships in Drammen, Norway. She benched 147.5kg in the 76kg class for 113.51 GL points. This year she is nominated with 150.5kg. Can anyone knock her off top spot?
Similarly, Matilda Hjälle SWE was in second place last year with 155kg in the 84+kg class. In 2026 , she is nominated with 161kg, creeping closer to the world record at 167kg and mounting a challenge to Laura's dominance.
With over 300 athletes in this category across all the age categories, we have world champions and world record holder galore as well as a new crop of lifters attending Bench Worlds for the very first time.
Every session will be streamed on our YouTube channel. Join us live from 23rd May.
In 2025, Norway’s Kjell Bakkelund dropped into the 66kg class and laid waste to it, winning Sheffield and, later, the classic world title. By the time The World Games swung around, he was (just) in the 83kg class and claiming that he wasn’t going to make the cut again.
Despite this, he was back in the 66s at Sheffield this year and he is nominated in that class once again for classic worlds. He’s added 57kg to the total world record in that time and 17kg to the deadlift world record.
He’s nominated here with the 782kg total he did at Sheffield, and that will be very hard to touch.
Second on nominations is Joe Jordan USVI. He skipped classic worlds last year to focus on The World Games. The sacrifice paid off and he brought home one of the first batch of gold medals in the classic category. He’s nominated with the 720kg he did in Chengdu but he has since posted 732.5kg at SBD Austin.
Kyota Ushiyama JPN also skipped last year’s worlds in favour of The World Games. He was evenly matched with Joe, only 2.5kg behind him at that event and his 717.5kg from China stands as his nomination. However, he hit 725kg at Asians in December so the battle for podium places could be a close run thing.
We also have the current junior world champion, Austin Nikolai USA, last year’s bronze medallist Santos Jimenez MEX and equipped world champion Yusuke Satake JPN lining up behind them, so you won’t want to miss this one.
The 66kg class will lift on Sunday 14th June with the B group lifting earlier in the day and the A group lifting in Prime Time. Watch live and for free on YouTube.
Last year at the World Bench Press Championships in Drammen, Kazakhstan's Askar Shokhanov took Best Lifter in the men's equipped category. He is back to defend in 2026 but he is nominated in third place in the 105s, behind last year's silver medallist, Viktor Leskovets UKR and Bhaskar Shah IND who just missed the podium last year.
There looks to be close battle forming in the 120kg class too with Per Marius Hole NOR, Ilya Maslov KAZ and Chimidtseren Bataa MGL all within 2.5kg of each other.
And with huge names like Kosei Yokoyama JPN, Ivan Chuprynko UKR, Kostiantyn Musiienko UKR and Garrett Bentley CAN all lining up to compete, equipped bench fans are in for a treat.
It looks like we won't see Daiki Kodama JPN in a shirt this year though. It's the first time in about 15 years that he won't compete in this category and he will be missed, but we have so many renowned lifters on the roster that we are guaranteed a feast of world class benching.
Every minute streamed for free on our YouTube channel. Join us live from 23rd May.
At the 2025 World Classic in Chemnitz, Germany, we saw a great battle in the 52kg class between NZ team-mates Evie Corrigan and Megan-Li Smith. Evie came out on top that day but Megan-Li was on a charge at The World Games in China shortly afterwards and took second place ahead of Evie’s third. Megan also broke the total world record at that event with 482.5kg, which stands as her nomination for this year’s worlds.
Evie has moved back up to the 57s now so we won’t see them go head to head again any time soon. But we will have Team NED squat queen Pleun Dekkers in the mix. Pleun has broken the squat world record in this class 14 times already, and we see no reason why the situation will be any different in Lithuania. Megan-Li did break the record herself in Chengdu but Pleun had it back at the recent Europeans in Malta with 182.5kg.
Pleun is nominated here with the 464.5kg she did at Dutch nationals last November and that included a 194kg deadlift - much more than we’ve seen from her before. This bodes well for the coming battle.
Not far behind is Canada’s Catherine Gagné. Her 455kg nomination was from Canadian nationals where she missed her third squat, leaving kilos behind so we expect this to be closer than it currently looks on paper.
We have the deadlift world record holder, Singapore’s Farhanna Farid in attendance too. She’s broken the record at every world championships since Sun City, 2022, usually by half a kilo. However, she kicked it a fair way up the road in Chengdu, adding 7.5kg to it in one go and it’s getting to ridiculous levels now at 217.5kg. Can it really go much further?
The 52s will lift on the second day of competition, split between the B group in the morning and the A group lifting in Prime Time in the evening. Every session will be streamed live and for free on YouTube. See you there.
At the 2025 World Classic Powerlifting Championships in Germany, Spain’s Iván Campano Díaz made a huge leap forward and totalled 637.5kg to add his first open world title to his two victories in the junior category. He did 642.5kg not long after at The World Games in China, and that’s the total he’s nominated with here for the 2026 edition of Classic Worlds in Druskininkai, Lithuania.
He isn’t at the top though. That distinction goes to Michael Slabic of Team USA. We haven’t seen him on the international platform yet, but he’s smashed his way to the top of nominations with a 651kg total that included an unofficial world record deadlift at an incredible 301kg. Can’t wait to see what he will do in Lithuania.
French lifter Antoine Garcia was world champion in Sun City in 2022 and hasn’t been far from the podium since. He was in action recently in Malta at the European Classic, where he picked up his second European title and broke the long standing squat world record with 240.5kg. In second place last year, he is nominated in third place here with the 628kg total he did at Euros.
Just behind him is Yasutaka Takiyama of Japan who seems to have come a long way since we last saw him in 2024. And with Kwaku Nyarko, last year’s bronze medallist, and equipped legend Franklin Leon also in the mix, we are promised a real fight for podium places.
This weight class is really heating up and they will open the whole competition in the morning session on Saturday 13th June.
Every lift streamed live and for free. Don’t miss a minute.
New World Masters 4 Record Bench Press Equipped with 191 kg by Vidar Alexander Ringvold 🇳🇴 in the -120 kg class.
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