From 24 to 29 August 2026, SEB Arena in Vilnius hosted the IBTA World Blind Tennis Championships. The event was organised by the Lithuanian club Blind Sport LT. For us at Vest Media it was the largest production week so far. Normally we run one broadcast: the commentators switch courts, or show several at once. In Vilnius, for the first time, separate court streams went out alongside a main feed with commentary. Ten courts were in the scoring system, and five of them were live.
The photo is from the closing ceremony. When the production crew was announced, Dawid Suchodolski waved from the booth.
Ten courts, five streams, and a main feed
SEB Arena is a large hall, and the tournament ran long: the opening ceremony on 24 August, then matches from 25 to 29 August. On an ordinary event there is one broadcast. The commentators switch between courts, or show several courts in one picture, including all four at once. The viewer watches a single programme.
In Vilnius, on IBTA tennis TV, we did it the other way for the first time. Separate streams went out from five courts — 3, 6, 9, 16 and 17 — plus a main feed with commentary. Anyone who wanted one match stayed on that court. Anyone who wanted the day and the commentary had the main stream. All ten courts were still in the system on blindtennis.app.
The organiser summed up the sporting scale on its own site: five days of play, 320 matches, 14 titles (eight in singles and six in doubles) and medals for players from 13 countries. In its post-event release, Blind Sport LT wrote of more than 100 athletes from 19 countries. Prize money was paid for the first time in the history of these championships: €1,000 for gold, €700 for silver and €400 for bronze. Full results, groups and official documents are at blindsport.lt/championship.
What is on YouTube
The recordings are on IBTA tennis TV. Figures as of 5 October 2026:
- the main feed — six recordings: opening (1,878 views), day 1 (4,044), day 2 (2,282), day 4 (3,013), day 5 (2,035) and the finals (2,684), together 15,936
- separate recordings from courts 3, 6, 9, 16 and 17 — 16,952 views
- every published recording of the championships on the channel — 32,888 views
That is the sum of views on the files, not a count of unique viewers. Some court days are on the channel as more than one recording, and each of those was counted separately. The channel archive has no main-feed file titled as day 3.
The finals of the main feed are below. The other days and courts are on the channel.
Blind tennis Lithuania also edited a short film of the whole week, just under three minutes. It is on the organiser’s Facebook page:
Film from the World Championships in Vilnius
blindtennis.app during the championships
Scores, the schedule, draws and match history went to blindtennis.app. From 24 to 30 August the site gathered 16,359 pageviews and 1,983 sessions (Umami; almost all of them on blindtennis.app, the rest on score.vestmedia.pl). The match days alone, 25–29 August, were 15,856 pageviews and 1,915 sessions. The strongest day was the first day of play, 25 August: 4,535 pageviews and 538 sessions.
The traffic was international, like the tournament itself. The most sessions came from Lithuania (546), Great Britain (278), Poland (262), Germany (169) and Australia (131). Of the 1,983 sessions, 1,765 started on a phone. The pages opened most often were the live view, the home page, history, the schedule and the draw.
Polish medals
On the medal table published on the organiser’s results page, Poland has two silvers and three bronzes:
- Aleksandra Karakula — silver in B3 women’s singles
- Justyna Stopierzyńska — bronze in B2 women’s singles
- Katarzyna Antczak — bronze in B4 women’s singles
- Justyna Stopierzyńska and Aranzazu Mezo (Poland / Australia) — silver in B2 women’s doubles
- Małgorzata Ignasiak and Charlotte Schwagmeier (Poland / Germany) — bronze in B3–B4 women’s doubles
On that same table, Australia leads with 9 gold, 8 silver and 2 bronze. The full podium of every category, including the placement matches, is on the organiser’s site.
Thank you to Blind Sport LT, the referees, the volunteers and everyone who kept the tournament moving for a week. Vilnius stays on the IBTA channel and on blindtennis.app.