The first World Artistic Gymnastics Championships were held in 1903.
The inaugural competition was the Antwerp International Gymnastics Tournament, staged in Antwerp, Belgium, from 14 to 18 August 1903 alongside the 27th Belgian Federal Festival. It is retrospectively recognized as the first Artistic Gymnastics World Championships. The early championship was very different from the modern competition: it consisted of men’s team events rather than the individual apparatus finals familiar today.
Individual all-around scores were introduced later, in 1922, and individual apparatus results developed subsequently. The early championships also had a less standardized structure than today’s event programme, reflecting the evolving organization of international gymnastics in the years before the First World War.
The championships are organized by the International Gymnastics Federation, commonly known as World Gymnastics or FIG. They should not be confused with the Olympic gymnastics competitions, although the same artistic discipline appears at both. Nor should 1903 be confused with 1896, when gymnastics featured at the first modern Olympic Games: that was an Olympic competition, not the first World Artistic Gymnastics Championships.