Europe’s male swimmers had lots to show for a 2024 which saw a total of 12 Olympic gold medals secured for the continent – setting up another year of showdowns and drama in 2025.

The World Aquatics Championships 2025 in Singapore from July 11 to August 3 will be the best chance for fans to catch those eight champions from last summer’s Games in Paris. And one huge storyline set to be renewed at that competition will be the men’s 200m butterfly, involving France’s Leon Marchand and Hungary’s Kristof Milak.

Marchand, who took four Olympic titles in Paris, overtook Milak, the defending champion, in the final 50m of that event in Paris. The Hungarian responded by winning the men’s 100m butterfly event, in which he had taken silver at the Tokyo 2020 Games.

The 22-year-old French idol is tipped to be entering the 200m butterfly again in the summer, alongside the 200m and 400m individual medley and 200m breaststroke – in which he also took Olympic titles in 2024.

Marchand will clearly be among the favourites in those events, and his rivalry with Milak, as well as Great Britain’s Duncan Scott (who did battle with Marchand in both the Olympic Games and World Cup stops in 2024), will be watched closely in the Asian country.

Also seeking to impress at the competition will be David Popovici. The 20-year-old burst onto the scene in the summer of 2022 in taking two gold medals at that year’s World Championships. Off the back of a 200m freestyle Olympic title in 2024, and the Singapore competition standing alone as the only major long course international senior swimming competition this year, the incentive is strong for the Romanian to take to the podium once more.

Germany’s Lukas Martens won the 400m freestyle Olympic gold medal last summer, and the 23-year-old has been going from strength-to-strength in recent years. With a whole host of swimmers from the likes of Australia, South Korea and Brazil looking to take the world-best accolade in one of the most stacked events on schedule in 2025, the 23-year-old could be poised to do something special as fans wait to see if compatriot Paul Biedermann’s long-standing world record from 2009 will remain intact.

Also looking to make their mark in 2025 will be the Great Britain 4x200m freestyle relay quartet. The team of James Guy, Tom Dean, Matt Richards and Duncan Scott made history in 2024 as the first British relay ever across the sports of swimming and athletics to retain an Olympic title, and after coming under the seven minute mark on both of those occasions, the world record mark of 6:58.55 is sure to be in their sights when they take to the blocks in Singapore on August 1.

Another key battle to watch out for is in the breaststroke events. Great Britain’s Adam Peaty narrowly missed completing the 100m breaststroke Olympic three-peat last summer, losing out to Italy’s Nicolo Martinenghi. With the 30-year-old recently hinting at a potential Los Angeles 2028 Olympics push, fans will get their latest chance to look at how the most wide-open men’s breaststroke scenes in over a decade is developing this summer.

Away from Singapore, the European Aquatics Short Course Swimming Championships return for 2025 as the other major competition – with Poland set to play host to the best athletes on the continent from December 2 to 7,

Amongst the athletes set to compete is Switzerland’s Noe Ponti. The 23-year-old broke both the 50m and 100m butterfly world records on his way to a hat-trick of gold medals at last year’s World Aquatics Swimming Championships (25m) 2024 – a year after he took golds in all three butterfly events at the last edition of the European competition.

Watch out for Ponti’s next short course flourish, perhaps under pressure from the likes of France’s Maxime Grousset and Italy’s Alberto Razetti.

Other Olympic champions from Paris with strong short-course pedigrees who look set to participate in Poland include Ireland’s Daniel Wiffen, who took 800m freestyle gold in an Olympic and European record time last summer.

He will seek to retain the 800m and 1500m titles he won at the previous World Aquatics Championships in Doha, and has a hat-trick of titles from the 2023 European Short Course Championships in Otopeni to defend- over 400m, 800m and 1500m. World records could also be at risk…

The men’s backstroking scene has been dominated by European athletes in recent years, with a few exceptions, and both Italy’s Thomas Ceccon and Hungary’s Hubert Kos – who took 100m and 200m backstroke Olympic titles respectively in Paris – will be looking to impress in Singapore and also in that short course competition to close out the year.

Ceccon boasts an impressive short-course portfolio, with 10 world and five European medals, and following a 2023 hiatus from the competition, fans in attendance in Poland may be able to see him take to the podium once more during what is set to be a much quieter winter period than has been the case in recent years.

Kos, on the other hand, had one of the biggest sets of short-course performances in 2024. The 21-year-old became Olympic, European and world champion last year, with the latter title coming in short-course.

Poland’s competition presents a unique opportunity for the young athlete to diversify his repertoire as the first year of a new Olympic cycle comes to an end, as well offering aa chance of breaking the 200m backstroke short-course world record, which he missed by only two hundredths of a second last December.

Alongside the two major competitions, the World Aquatics Swimming World Cup is set for a return in 2025 towards the end of the year and the European U23 and Junior Swimming Championships are due to take place in the summer at Samorin in Slovakia.