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Alex Lanier beat Kodai Naraoka 21-11, 21-11 to become the first Frenchman to win the men’s singles world title, closing the BWF World Championships 2026 in New Delhi. An Se-young reclaimed the women’s crown with a 21-17, 21-14 win over defending champion Akane Yamaguchi, taking her second world title without dropping a game all week.
New Delhi, India: France had never produced a men’s singles world champion in badminton. By Sunday evening at the Indira Gandhi Arena, they had two gold medals in a single afternoon.
Thom Gicquel and Delphine Delrue took the mixed doubles first. Then Alex Lanier walked out for the men’s final and produced the most one-sided title match of the week.
Forty-Two Points From Sixty-Four
Naraoka never got into it. Lanier, the ninth seed, took the opening game 21-11 and the second by the identical score, winning 42 of the 64 points played and stringing together eight in a row at one stage. The whole thing lasted just under 50 minutes.
It caps a tournament in which the 22-year-old from Caen dropped only two games. One came against Victor Lai in the semi-final, where he recovered from a game down to win 16-21, 21-13, 21-14. The other came in the quarter-final against Kunlavut Vitidsarn, the 2023 champion and second seed.
Lanier, the 2025 European champion, is the first French player to be crowned world singles champion.
An Se-young Takes Back What She Lost
The women’s final was closer but no less decisive. An Se-young, the world No. 1 and reigning Olympic champion, beat Akane Yamaguchi 21-17, 21-14 in 49 minutes.
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The opening game stayed level throughout — Yamaguchi edged 16-15 ahead after An had led 15-12 — before the Korean’s finishing under pressure told. She absorbed Yamaguchi’s attacking bursts and took control at the moments that decided the game.
It is An’s second world title after her breakthrough in Copenhagen in 2023, when she became the first Korean woman to win the women’s singles world crown. Last year she went out in the semi-finals and settled for bronze. This time she won all six matches without dropping a game, from the first round through the final, having also come through a tight semi-final against Wang Zhiyi 24-22, 21-16.
The defeat ended Yamaguchi’s perfect record in World Championships finals. The Japanese second seed, a three-time world champion, had reached the title match three times before and won every one. An has now beaten her in six consecutive meetings and leads their head-to-head 20-15.
A Final Day of Firsts
South Korea took a second title on the day through Baek Ha-na and Lee So-hee, who beat top seeds Liu Shengshu and Tan Ning 21-15, 21-15 in the women’s doubles final. France’s mixed doubles gold came from Gicquel and Delrue’s win over Feng Yanzhe and Huang Dongping.
For the host nation, the week produced a single medal — bronze for Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand, India’s first in women’s doubles since 2011, from a pair ranked 39th in the world. PV Sindhu’s bid for a record sixth World Championships medal ended in the round of 16, and Ayush Shetty’s tournament finished the same evening, days after he had removed defending champion Shi Yuqi in the opening round.
Finals — BWF World Championships 2026
Men’s singles: [9] Alex Lanier (FRA) d. Kodai Naraoka (JPN) 21-11, 21-11
Women’s singles: [1] An Se-young (KOR) d. [2] Akane Yamaguchi (JPN) 21-17, 21-14
Women’s doubles: Baek Ha-na/Lee So-hee (KOR) d. [1] Liu Shengshu/Tan Ning (CHN) 21-15, 21-15
Mixed doubles: Thom Gicquel/Delphine Delrue (FRA) d. Feng Yanzhe/Huang Dongping (CHN) 20-22, 21-19, 21-15
Venue: Indira Gandhi Arena, New Delhi
