The World Athletics Indoor Championships is a biennial indoor track and field competition. It is organized by the World Athletics and had been inaugurated as the World Indoor Games in the year 1985 in Paris, France. It was subsequently renamed as the IAAF World Indoor Championships in the year 1987. The current name had been adopted along with the change in the name of the sports governing body in the year 2019.

The 18th World Athletics Indoor Championships had earlier been scheduled to be held from 13th March to 15th March 2020 in Nanjing, China at the Cube gymnasium located in the Nanjing Youth Olympic Sports Park. The place has been built recently. Its Construction had started in 2017 and has been completed right in time for the event. The track and field and the swimming venues are located in the A Block of the park. To the east is the Yangtze River complex where catering, as well as the hotels, are present and all the security work for the event will be carried out.

However, it is important to note that now the event has been postponed till March 2021. The reason behind this is the current 2019–20 coronavirus outbreak. This is going to be the first event that Nanjing is hosting. Cedar is the official mascot for the World Athletics Indoor Championships Nanjing 2021.

The World Athletics Indoor Championships have been held every two years except one time when they were held consecutively in the years 2003 and 2004 to facilitate the need for these events to be held in the alternate years to the main World Athletics Championships (outdoors).

The events held during the championship have been more or less the same since the start. The 4 x 400 m relay race for men and women had been added to the schedule in the year 1991 with the women's triple jump as an exhibition event.

Nanjing had won the bidding process for the Championships. The Delegations from three candidate cities had shown their presentations to the Council, first Nanjing (CHN), followed by Belgrade (SRB) and Toru (POL).

The organizers have said that they had received advice from their medical team that the spread of the Coronavirus is at a level that is alarming both within China and outside and it has been advised that no one should be allowed to go ahead with a major gathering that can be postponed for a while.