WorldSkills Lyon 2024 medals: Celebrating excellence

Last January, at the press conference that launched the WorldSkills Lyon 2024 roadmap, the Organizing Committee presented to the public the medals that will be awarded during the Competition. As a true token of excellence and recognition of skills, these medals symbolize the essence of the 47th WorldSkills Competition and pay tribute to France and the city of Lyon. 

The WorldSkills Competition takes its cues from the world of top-level sport, and there are many similarities between sports and skills athletes. They share common values such as commitment, excellence and surpassing oneself, as well as common codes, through pre-competition physical and mental preparation, the formation of national teams, as well as podiums and medal ceremonies. 

The WorldSkills Lyon 2024 Competitors who will get to the podium next September will be awarded gold, silver and bronze medals. Two other medals are also awarded at each Competition: 

• Best of Nation, which rewards the best Competitor from each country or region represented, all skills included. 

• Medallion for Excellence, awarded to Competitors who have accumulated a certain number of points on the scoring scale during their trials. 

For WorldSkills Lyon 2024, the medals were inspired by France, and more specifically by Lyon, the host city of the Competition. Lyon is represented by its emblematic Place Bellecour, Europe’s largest pedestrian square. Two of its most popular features are also recognizable: 

• Its majestic big wheel: the city’s iconic atraction. 

• The silhouette of Louis XIV, the Sun King – the longest reigning monarch in history – whose statue stands at the heart of Place Bellecour. 

Like the 6 skills sectors represented at the Competition, 6 hexagons are superimposed on the medals: a tribute to France, and to the vibrancy of the WorldSkills Lyon 2024 hexagon, the beating heart of the promotion of skills and vocational training. Within these 6 sectors are spread our 62 represented skills: each of them, essential, is represented on the medals by an embossed dot. 

“The process of creating the medal was a journey of ideas, a composition of graphic elements each telling a piece of the story. To create is above all to tell something. I wanted to highlight the different aspects of the Competition to shape the object that would bring the story to a perfect conclusion.”  

— Mathias Nirdol, in charge of artistic direction for WorldSkills Lyon 2024 

In addition to rewarding Competitors for the years of hard work and preparation leading up to the WorldSkills Competition, our medals tell a global story: that of the 47th WorldSkills Competition, a memory that will remain engraved in the minds of all those taking part in this great celebration of skills.