The Olympic pool created for the Munich 1972 Games will teem with talent this week as Germany hosts its first European Aquatics Junior Swimming Championships for 40 years.
A total of 599 athletes are set to compete at the 52nd staging of this event, which will start on Tuesday July 7 and conclude on Sunday July 12.
And the entry list boasts a wealth of defending champions clearly heading for the heights of the sport.
For many these Championships will be a vital step towards the main event of the summer, the European Aquatics Championships Paris 2026, which get underway on July 31 with swimming scheduled to take place in the Olympic Aquatics Centre from August 10 to 16.
Lithuania will be looking once again to the prodigious talent of 17-year-old Tajus Juska, who won 50m freestyle and 100m butterfly gold at last year’s Samorin edition at the outdoor pool within Slovakia’s Olympic training centre.
Juska, who also won the world junior 100m butterfly title last year, is seeking gold for a third consecutive edition of these Championships having won the 100m freestyle in his native Vilnius in 2024.
In Samorin he collected 100m freestyle silver behind Spain’s Luca Hoek, whom he beat to the 50m freestyle title. That personal rivalry is due to play out once again in Munich.
Meanwhile Great Britain – who topped the medals table last year with a total of 19 including nine golds – will have high hopes that 16-year-old Amalie Smith can achieve the same levels of success she did in Samorin, where she earned breakthrough victories in the 200m and 400m individual medley.
Britain will also hold expectations for Dean Fearn, who will defend the 50m butterfly title he won last year before adding the world title in the same event.
Other defending champions involved will include Austria’s Christian Giefing in the men’s 200m freestyle, Spain’s David Antal in the 200m butterfly and neutral athlete Gregorii Vekovishchev in the 400m freestyle.
Vekovishchev’s team-mate Sofia Diakova will defend her 400m and 800m freestyle titles, while other returning women’s champions include Italy’s Bianca Nannucci in the 200m freestyle, Romania’s Daria Silisteaunu in the 100m backstroke and Flawia Kamzol of Poland in the 50m butterfly.
The hosts will have 37 swimmers competing, a total only bettered by Italy who have 40 representatives, and the Individual Neutral Athletes (AIN) who will number 39.
France are next after Germany with 31 swimmers, followed by Spain, Great Britain and Poland on 24, Turkiye on 21 and Hungary on 20.
AIN finished second overall in 2025 with five golds from a total of 13, followed by Italy and then Spain, both of whom earned four golds in their total of 14 medals.
Mike Rowbottom for European Aquatics
