About Virtus Global Games

The Virtus Global Games are the pinnacle elite sports event for athletes with an intellectual impairment in the world. They take place every four years, in the preceding year to the Paralympic Games.

Around 1000 athletes from around the world compete for medals in sports including athletics, swimming, table tennis, rowing, basketball, futsal, tennis, taekwondo, and cycling. Demonstration events are also included at every edition. These reflect the most popular sports of the host nation not already on the Virtus programme.

Many athletes who have made their major international debut at the Global Games have gone on to win Paralympic titles in athletics, swimming and table tennis.

Global Games Logo

At the Global Games 2019 in Brisbane, a new logo for the Games was created. Going forward this logo will continue to be used by all subsequent Virtus Global Games. Host countries will have the benefit of a sustained brand recognition with a standardised Games logo effective from 2019, 2023 and onto 2027 and 2031.

The logo shape primarily combines the following creative elements to bring it to life:

  1. The human element which is an interpretation of a head and hands to represent the athletes, officials, volunteers, spectators, and the communities within which the Games will occur.
  2. A play on the ‘letter G’ a literal reference to the Global Games.
  3. The circular shape promoting all that the Games represent inclusiveness, sense of community spirit and engagement.

The colours used within the emblem are represented by the host country. This is the only part of the Global Games logo that can be amended to suit the hosting Virtus Member’s goal and vision for the event.

Allowing the change of the emblem promotes the Virtus mission for inclusiveness, representing nationalities and people from all over the world to evoke a sense of inclusiveness.

History

Three years after the organisation was launched in 1986, the first multi-sport event for athletes with an intellectual impairment were held in Harnosand, Sweden, in 1989, named ‘the 1st World Games for Athletes with an Intellectual Disability’. Thereafter, the event was called INAS Global Games.

Over the following years the focus shifted to getting onto the Paralympic programme, adding sports and countries. More information about this can be found on the history of Virtus. After more than a decade of continued development of sport for athletes with an intellectual impairment, the Global Games returned to their roots in Sweden in 2004. Fast forward to 2019, at the Global Games in Brisbane, Australia, INAS was renamed Virtus, signalling a new era of an elite-multi-sport event for World Intellectual Impairment Sport.

Results from all previous Global Games can be found at the results, rankings and records page.