In which year were the Bandy World Championships first held?

Bandy is a team winter sport played on ice, in which skaters use sticks to direct a bandy ball into the opposing team's goal.

The Bandy World Championship is a competition between bandy-playing nations' men's teams. The tournament is administrated by the Federation of International Bandy. It is distinct from the Bandy World Cup, a club competition, and from the Women's Bandy World Championship. A Youth Bandy World Championship also exists separately from the senior competition.

Although bandy has been played since the 19th century, the first men's world championships were only played as recently as 1957, and the first women's championships not until 2004.

From 1961 to 2003, the men's championships were played every two years, but since then has been played annually.

For a long time, only four countries competed at the world championships: the Soviet Union, Sweden, Finland and Norway, with the Soviet Union the dominating country. Since then, more countries have joined the tournaments, starting with the United States in 1985. The record number of participants is 20, set in 2019.

The most consecutive gold medals were won by the Soviet Union with 11. Russia has won four consecutive gold medals and Sweden has won three consecutive gold medals.