2025 World Championships
- July 27 – August 3, 2025 (pool swimming)
- Singapore, Singapore
- World Aquatics Championships Arena
- LCM (50m)
- Meet Central
- Entry Book
- Live Results
- SwimSwam Preview Index
We have looked at every event of the 2025 World Championships, analyzing who the SwimSwim staff “predicts” to medal in each of the pool swimming events.
It is not a perfect science, but one of the things we are looking to calculate is the way the Worlds medal table could shake out. This year, the staff thinks the Americans will go home with the most gold medals.
Our predictions for the medal table have been wrong the last two times we have made them, though, so just because we predicted it doesn’t mean it’s a sure thing. In 2023, we predicted the United States would win the most gold medals at 11 and that Australia would win 10. As we all know, Australia walked away with 13 gold medals to the United States’ seven.
The opposite happened last summer. We predicted Australia would win 11 gold medals, beating the United States prediction of 10 golds. This race was as close as we predicted, but the US won eight golds to Australia’s seven.
Our prediction for this summer is not as close. In fact, we predicted the United States to all but run away with the win, earning 15 gold medals to Australia’s six.
What has changed about the predictions from last summer that makes us think the United States will almost double their medal count in one year? Stroke 50s, relays, and Sarah Sjostrom’s year off.
We have the United States women winning two of the three stroke 50s, one of which would have gone to Australia’s Kaylee McKeown had she not scratched before the preview was live. We also have Torri Huske and Gretchen Walsh splitting the gold medals that went to Sarah Sjostrom in 2024.
We also have the American swimmers taking six of the eight relay golds. In Paris, they only won three. You can read our exact reasonings for each pick in the event previews, but there are the seven extra medals from last summer.
Some of our predictions are already proven to be wrong. We released some of the previews before certain athletes withdrew, and once they are out there, we aren’t changing them.
One example is the men’s 200 butterfly. We have Leon Marchand predicted as the gold medalist, but he recently scratched out of the 200 breast and 200 fly events, so he will not be winning the 200 fly gold. That will impact the medal table.
Australia is predicted to win six while Canada and China are tied at five predicted gold medals a piece. Many of these rankings could easily change depending on how athletes are performing.
The men’s fly events are an excellent example of where something could change easily. We predicted Maxime Grousset would win the 100, but then we predicted two Canadian swimmers behind him, and with the right swims they could help move Canada ahead of China.
Final SwimSwam Preview Index Medals Table
| Nation | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
| United States | 15 | 14 | 12 | 41 |
| Australia | 6 | 8 | 3 | 16 |
| China | 5 | 4 | 6 | 14 |
| Canada | 5 | 3 | 3 | 11 |
| France | 4 | 0 | 1 | 5 |
| Neutral Athletes B/Russia | 2 | 4 | 1 | 7 |
| Germany | 1 | 2 | 1 | 4 |
| Romania | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Hungary | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Lithuania | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Neutral Athletes A/Belarus | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Great Britain | 0 | 2 | 5 | 7 |
| Italy | 0 | 2 | 3 | 5 |
| Netherlands | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Switzerland | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Ireland | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| Hong Kong | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Japan | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Korea | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| New Zealand | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
From what I posted in the Pick’em entries page:
Medal tallies shaping up to likely be:
Tier 1: USA
Tier 2: CHN, AUS, CAN in some order
Tier 3: ITA, FRA, GER, GBR, NAB in some order
Feel like we may see quite a few smaller swimming nations not on this list rack up 1 or 2 men’s medals each.
The women’s events may largely be swept by Tiers 1&2.
Is that with or without the airline barf bags?