An animation contest on theme of skills categories in next year's 46th WorldSkills Competition taking place in Shanghai has been introduced by the event's executive bureau and the Shanghai Education Commission.

The event is expected to enhance young students’ understanding of the competition and inspire them to take part in it.

Organizers of the contest recently held an online briefing at the Shanghai Commercial Accounting School to explain details and give technical guidance to schools whose students are potential contestants. Officials, teachers and students from more than 50 universities took part in the briefing.

Officials from the WorldSkills Shanghai 2022 Executive Bureau provided a briefing on the WorldSkills Competition, the “One School, One Member” program and interactive activities for the public.

The animation contest will promote “One School, One Member,” a program that will take place before the competition to connect each of the participating countries with schools in China. It is designed to help students learn about each of the competition's skill categories, and serve as a platform to showcase their animation-production skills and have exchanges with their peers.

The Shanghai Education Commission released a notice about the contest last October, and several schools have registered on the contest's website (www.skillssh.com) to submit students’ work.

Luo Shengqiang, an associate professor at the WorldSkills Competition China Research Center, introduced the 63 skills categories for the 46th WorldSkills Competition during the briefing session while an employee from DAN GAME, a co-organizer of the animation contest, elaborated on event details.

According to the organizers, the contest is open to university and vocational school students under the age of 22. Those interested should submit animation videos between 30 and 60 seconds in length with English subtitles through the competition's website by August 31.

Their submissions will be assessed by judges and voted on by the public online in September. Finalists will be reviewed by experts in October, and winning submissions will be announced on October 25.

The most outstanding works will be posted on social media and at the venue of the competition.

The Worldskills Competition is taking place on the Chinese mainland for the first time on October 12-17, 2022, at the National Exhibition and Convention Center in Shanghai. It will feature more than 1,400 participants from over 60 countries and regions competing in over 60 skills categories. The WorldSkills Conference will take place on October 13 and 14.

Preparations for the event are well underway, including a conversion of the century-old Yong’an Warehouse in Yangpu District into the WorldSkills Museum, which will tell the story of how different skills have changed the lives of people and societies around the world and the efforts of the WorldSkills global community.
 

WorldSkills Lyon 2024 is set to take place from September 10 to 15 in 2024, following the postponement of the 46th WorldSkills Competition in Shanghai by one year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, organizers announced on Friday.

France won the bid to host the 47th WorldSkills Competition at the WorldSkills General Assembly 2019 in Kazan, Russia.

It is the second time in the history of the skills international championship for France and Lyon to host the event.

The 33rd WorldSkills Competition previously took place in 1995 at EUREXPO Lyon, the same venue that will host WorldSkills Lyon 2024.

The 47th WorldSkills Competition is expected to feature 1,400 contestants from over 60 countries and regions competing to be the very best young skilled professionals in the world.

“WorldSkills France has been a member of WorldSkills since 1953, and since then has led a movement in France to create a robust national commitment to skills development,” said Chris Humphries, President of WorldSkills.

“We are certain that WorldSkills Lyon 2024 is going to be a success, highlighting the essential role skills development has in releasing the potential of individuals, communities and countries."

Michel Guisembert, president of WorldSkills Lyon 2024, added: "Youth are at the heart of WorldSkills Lyon 2024. The mission of WorldSkills France is above all to unite and mobilize all public and private stakeholders around the project. We will achieve a collective performance for the benefit of employment in our country and around the world, by encouraging young people to discover the career possibilities of skills through Team WorldSkills France and all WorldSkills member teams."

The 46th Worldskills Competition is taking place on the Chinese mainland for the first time from October 12 to 17 next year with Shanghai the host city. It will feature over 1,400 entrants from more than 60 countries and regions competing in over 60 skills. The WorldSkills Conference will take place on October 13-14.

Preparations for the event are well underway. Work is also ongoing to convert the century-old Yong’an Warehouse in Yangpu District into the WorldSkills Museum, which will tell the story of how skills have changed the lives of people and societies around the world and the efforts of the WorldSkills global community.
 

Mao Xiaotong, a 33-year-old actress, was announced as an ambassador for the 46th WorldSkills Competition on Monday, International Women’s Day.

The competition is taking place on the Chinese mainland for the first time from October 12 to 17 next year with Shanghai the host city. It will feature over 1,400 entrants from more than 60 countries and regions competing in over 60 skills. The WorldSkills Conference will take place on October 13-14.

Mao has starred in many TV series, including “Nothing but Thirty” which revolves around three women facing different challenges in their lives when they turn 30 years old.

In a video, Mao introduced the event to viewers and called on them to support it over the following 20 months. She also called on women to improve their career competitiveness by developing skills and encourage them to face up to challenges and share opportunities.

To promote the 46th WorldSkills Competition and artisanship among young people, event organizers have invited several celebrities to highlight its importance. Among them are China’s top beauty influencer Li Jiaqi, young Chinese actors Yi Yangqianxi and Ding Yuxi, actress Tan Songyun, as well as former WorldSkills winners Song Biao, Chen Yifan and Yuan Qiang.

Preparations for the event are well underway. Work is also ongoing to convert the century-old Yong’an Warehouse in Yangpu District into the WorldSkills Museum, which will tell the story of how skills have changed the lives of people and societies around the world and the efforts of the WorldSkills global community.

The Shanghai Women Pace-setters Society was appointed as a promotion team for the 46th WorldSkills Competition on Monday, International Women’s Day.

The WorldSkills Shanghai Executive Bureau, an organizer of the competition, and the society, a local organization for winners of the title of women pace-setters, agreed to cooperate in engaging more women in promoting the event taking place in Shanghai from October 12 to 17 next year.

They will also join in encouraging women in innovating and learning skills as well as inspiring their dedication in skills development to make a bigger contribution to society.

At the appointing ceremony, several women outstanding in their careers shared their experience and views on how to improve women’s professional competitiveness with skills.

“The WorldSkills Competition is to promote skills development around the world and our organization consists of leading technical experts, managers and scientists. We are honored to join the efforts in promoting the event which will take place on our doorstep,” said Li Yanling, the society’s chairwoman.

“Surely there will be women pace-setters participating in the event and more pace-setters will be honored due to their outstanding performance in it,” she said. “We will give full play to outstanding women as role models and help more women to realize their own dreams and build a better life.”

Chen Yifan, a China Eastern Airlines flight attendant, shared her story of competing in the 44th WorldSkills Competition in Abu Dhabi in 2017.

Chen was being trained as a flight attendant when she was selected as a candidate for the competition in restaurant service skills.

“I decided to pick up the challenge, and the whole process of training and competing made me more capable of handling challenges because I have solved so many in it,” she said.

“There are about eight women competitors from China in each WorldSkills Competition on average, which takes place once every two years,” she added. “We all have passed rounds of selections, which honed not only our skills, but also our will and mindset, enabling us to handle challenges calmly and confidently.”

Li Xianghua, of Volvo Cars, joined the company before it was purchased by Geely and after her husband moved to Shanghai.

“Because of the change in my husband’s job, I quit my job at Jinbei Auto in Shenyang and started from the beginning again in Shanghai,” she said.

She was one of the first 30 people in the company’s office in Shanghai, which now has over 1,200 staff in Shanghai and over 9,000 around the country.

“I was in charge of purchases but short of hands, so I was very busy at that time,” she said. “So I learned a lot of new skills to improve work efficiency, including team management skills.”

She said she was glad to learn about the WorldSkills Competition and would take the information back to the employees of her company, which also organizes its own skills competitions.

“We can also study the competition scheme of the world event to benefit ourselves,” she said. “I hope it will be chance for more people to learn more, get more and live a happier life.”

Chen Wei, who won gold, silver and bronze prizes in the Cake International competition in the UK in 2018, shared her story about how she had started her new career in food art after having a baby.

She said most women still had to balance family life and work while men didn’t have to.

“As mothers, we have to take care of our children’s life and study, while doing our job, which brings us a lot of challenges,” she said. “So when we are improving our skills to enhance our professional competitiveness, we also hope the whole society will work together to improve gender equality.”

As part of International Women’s Day, WorldSkills International, an organization promoting recognition of skills and skilled people, is also celebrating women’s achievements in an effort to forge a gender-equal world and encouraging women to share their stories.
 

A video contest promoting the 46th WorldSkills Competition has declared one about Chinese woodcarving master Zheng Chunhui winner of the first prize.

Another nine entries also won prizes for their outstanding efforts in the event organized by the Executive Bureau of the 46th WorldSkills Competition and the Shanghai Vancouver Film Academy of Shanghai University.

More than 450 videos were entered and assessed by experts.

Seven videos were also honored for their creativity in categories ranging from storytelling and editing to cultural inheritance and social influence.

The WorldSkills Competition is the world championship of skills held every two years. The 46th edition will take place in Shanghai from 12-17 October next year. It was originally scheduled for September this year but postponed due to the pandemic.

The short video contest, launched on 15 July last year, World Youth Skills Day, was part of the promotions for the event.

An awards ceremony will be held by the Executive Bureau of the 46th WorldSkills Competition and outstanding videos will be posted on online platforms.

Renowned Chinese social media influencer Li Jiaqi has been announced as an Ambassador for the 46th WorldSkills Competition set to take place in Shanghai next year.

He called for people to follow and cheer for the event and wished everyone a happy Chinese New Year in a video.

With around 100 million followers on Taobao’s livestreaming platform, a Chinese online shopping website, Li shot to fame for selling lipsticks and is now one of China’s top-selling influencers.

To promote the event and artisanship among young people, event organizers have invited several celebrities to cheer for it. Besides Li, there are also popular young Chinese actors Yi Yangqianxi, Ding Yuxi and Tan Songyun, as well as former WorldSkills Champions Song Biao, Chen Yifan, and Yuan Qiang.

The Competition will be the first of its kind to be held on the Chinese mainland and preparations are well underway. Work is also ongoing to convert the century-old Yong’an Warehouse in Yangpu District into the WorldSkills Museum, which will tell the story of how skills have changed the lives of people and societies around the world and the efforts of the WorldSkills global community.

The 46th WorldSkills Competition, earlier postponed, will take place 12-17 October 2022
The dates for the 46th WorldSkills Competition, previously scheduled for September 2021 in Shanghai, China, have now been scheduled for 12–17 October 2022. WorldSkills International announced last November the postponement of the championship by one year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
To ensure that the decision to change the date will not impact participants, the WorldSkills General Assembly unanimously approved a onetime change in the age eligibility criteria for the Competition. If a Competitor was age eligible for the WorldSkills Competition 2021, then they will also be eligible for 2022.
It was also agreed that the WorldSkills Conference, which runs parallel to the Competition bringing together leaders in education, government, business, and industry from around the globe, will take place on 13–14 October.
“The new event dates have been decided taking into account the continued unprecedented restrictions brought by the pandemic. We are confident that this period will provide all stakeholders with sufficient time for Members to host local and national competitions, train Competitors and to carry out their mission in such challenging times,” said David Hoey, CEO of WorldSkills International.
The new dates for WorldSkills Lyon 2024 are still being finalized and will be announced at a later date.
Over the next 20 months, Members and Global Partners will focus on local and national activities, including innovative development, selection, and training programmes. The year 2021 has been termed as a year of innovation, as the limitations posed by the pandemic will push Members to find new creative ways to connect with young people and inspire them to learn a skill.
The 46th WorldSkills Competition will be hosted in Shanghai, China in 2022 featuring over 1,400 Competitors from more than 60 countries and regions, competing in over 60 skills. WorldSkills Competitions create a global platform to develop help young people who want to change their lives and the fortunes of their communities and societies.

The flag of the 46th WorldSkills Competition reached Antarctica on Tuesday, after Chinese scientists on the Xuelong 2 icebreaker, or Snow Dragon 2, arrived there on a scientific expedition.
The expedition team members flew the national flag of China, the flags of WorldSkills Shanghai 2022 and WorldSkills International, banners and mascots of the competition, extending an invitation to the world to take part in the event taking place in Shanghai in 2022 and wishing it great success. The team will plant the competition flag at the South Pole later.
This was another occasion for the WorldSkills flag to arrive in an extreme environment, demonstrating the spirit of pursuing extreme excellence in artisanship. On May 27, it was brought by a team of intrepid Chinese mountaineers to the highest place on Earth – the summit of Everest.
The flag was taken on board the Xuelong 2 on November 10 last year ahead of the 37th expedition to Antarctica organized by China’s Ministry of Natural Resources.
The 116 team members will carry out hydrological, meteorological and environmental investigations in Antarctica and monitor pollutants such as microplastics and drifting garbage in the Antarctic Ocean.
The vessel is expected to travel over 55,560 kilometers by the time it returns to Shanghai in May.

It's been a year of sadness and disappointment, but also strength and determination.

This has been a year none of us will forget - one of sadness and disappointment, but also strength and great determination.
Only a few short months into his presidency of WorldSkills, Jos de Goey suddenly passed away at the age of 56.
Jos was elected unopposed and unanimously as President by Members at WorldSkills Kazan 2019, and his vision and energy looked certain to carry the organization toward new and exciting goals. He is deeply missed and will be remembered for his vibrant ambition to give young people a chance to hone their skills and develop their talent.
Early into 2020, we were all beginning to feel the force of the COVID-19 pandemic and the world began to shut down. The education of millions of young women and men was threatened, alongside local programmes and national competitions of WorldSkills Members worldwide.
Skills - the essence of our movement - would be instrumental in leading the way forward. At WorldSkills International, we began with a rallying cry to remind the world how skilled workers, from bakers to robot engineers, and mechanics to logistic managers, were keeping life going.
Our Keep the World Moving campaign, featuring heart-warming news of many of our young Champions rising to the challenges of the pandemic, demonstrated how these essential skilled workers became our new superheroes.
From across our Membership came equally inspiring stories, too many to mention here. In colleges, 3D printers were repurposed for masks, sewing machines for hospital gowns and PPE, and in one instance, the produce of an organic training farm distributed to needy families.
It was in their embracing of digital technology that our Members showed their skill, determination, and imagination. Combining rigorous social distancing standards with video conferencing, cloud services, and even body cameras meant numerous national activities adapted to continue their mission of connecting young people to skills.
General Assembly 2020, unable to be held in Dublin, became a virtual gathering for our Members to move the WorldSkills movement forward. This included welcoming three new Members, Azerbaijan, Kenya, and Uzbekistan, and our newest Global Partners, Amazon’s AWS Educate, Epic Games, and John Bean.
WorldSkills was proud to join the Global Education Coalition, an initiative by UNESCO, which brought together more than 140 members from the UN family, civil society, academia, and the private sector to protect the right to education during this unprecedented disruption.
Our Champions Trust, which marked its fifth anniversary, has been an inspiration this year, ensuring that the voice of youth was heard, speaking regularly to the unique challenges facing students in skills programmes who require the hands-on learning support not possible in virtual environments.
With new representatives of the Champions Trust joining for 2020, these young Champions articulated their concerns, views, and hopes across a range of international events including our own WorldSkills Conference Talks, as well as partner events such as the United Nations World Youth Skills Day, the VPET conference, and the OECD’s High-Level Political Forum, to name but a few.
Youth inspired us in other ways, including a record number of applications for our entrepreneurial programme, BeChangeMaker, and the launch this year of BeChangeMaker Africa, hosted in partnership with the HP Foundation and the African Union. Together they attracted nearly 800 entries from 100 countries.
Alongside all major international events, the pandemic has impacted the planning and hosting of the 46th WorldSkills Competition. It is a source of great pride for our movement that the decision, in November, to move the next two WorldSkills Competitions ahead by a year was reached with full agreement of all stakeholders, including the Competition Organizers and Members. We are grateful for the strong commitment of the supporters of WorldSkills Shanghai 2022 and WorldSkills Lyon 2024.
Momentum for the WorldSkills Competition in Shanghai reached new heights in 2020, with the planting of the WorldSkills Flag at the summit of Everest by Chinese mountaineers in May, along with continued progress on the building of the exciting WorldSkills Museum in Shanghai.
This year marked WorldSkills 70th anniversary, recognizing an event in late November 1950, when a small number of young apprentices from Spain and Portugal gathered in Madrid for the world’s first international skills competition.
The anniversary serves as a reminder that when Europe was ravaged by the aftermath of war, investing in skilled professionals was valued as essential to rebuilding not just economies, but the human spirit. Their foresight on the need to unite to develop skilled, young people serves as inspiration that there are no obstacles we cannot overcome together.
Best wishes,
WorldSkills Board and Secretariat

Canton Tower, also known as the Guangzhou TV Tower, was illuminated on Monday night to mark the 10-day countdown to the 1st Vocational Skills Competition of the People’s Republic of China.

Every night until December 13, the 600-meter-tall tower, the highest TV tower in China, will show a promotional video lasting four minutes and 30 seconds. Words such as “New Era, New Skills, New Dream,” the theme of the competition, and the “Master Skills, Change the World” slogan of the 46th WorldSkills Competition to take place in Shanghai in 2022 can be seen on the building.

The competition in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province, from December 10 to 13 will see 2,565 contestants from all over the country compete in 86 skill programs. The largest skills competition in China will have 2,384 judges.

Among them, 63 are included in the 46th WorldSkills Competition and contestants will also compete for places in the national training team before vying for tickets to represent China in the international competition.

Both Guangdong and Shanghai will have 97 contestants taking part in the event.

Besides the competition, there will also be demonstrations of traditional Chinese skills, exhibitions and interactive activities.Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, reservations will be needed for the public to attend the national competition while others can watch it online.