The European Athletics Council will decide on the cities to host the 2017 European Athletics Indoor Championships and 2016 European Athletics Youth Championships at its meeting this weekend in Frankfurt.
The candidates for the European Athletics Indoor Championships, Belgrade, Istanbul and Torun, will present their candidatures on the morning of Saturday 3 May.
Belgrade has experience in organising athletics events, most recently with the SPAR European Cross Country Championships in December 2013, which were a great success.
The venue for the event would be the Kombank Arena, a universal hall of sports which was used during the European Men’s Handball Championships 2012 and is also home to the Red Star and Partizan Belgrade basketball teams.
The Serbian Athletics Federation would like the championships to promote athletics as the most popular sport in Serbia. In addition the success of athletes such Emir Bekric, Ivana Spanovic and Amela Terzic added to the hosting of the championships can continue to strategically influence the development of Serbian athletics.
The city of Istanbul is familiar with organising athletics events, the Atakoy Athletics Arena having been specifically constructed for the IAAF World Indoor Championships 2012. It also hosted the 2012/2013/2014 Balkan Indoor Championships.
The Turkish Athletics Federation wants to be a regular host of international events and use the opportunity to promote athletics towards their youth, general public and sponsors.
Recently organised events such as the UEFA Champions League Final in 2005 and the FIBA World Basketball Championships in 2010 have drawn great sporting interest to Türkiye and hosting the European Athletics Indoor Championships would keep this interest alive.
Poland has recently been a major player in athletics, Sopot having just organised the IAAF World Indoor Championships 2014 in March. As for the city of Torun it has hosted the European Cup Combined Events 2011 and is already set to do so again in 2014.
The venue is the newly built Torun Sports Hall with the opening scheduled for June 2014. Thanks to this new facility Poland hopes to further promote athletics as an attractive and exciting sport.
The organisers are convinced that the European Athletics Indoor Championships will be the best occasion to fulfil the expectations of athletics fans in Poland and continue to develop the sport.
The cities bidding for the inaugural European Athletics Youth Championships are Rieti and Tbilisi. Both will present their candidatures to host the event on Saturday morning.
The Italian city of Rieti is known for hosting successful athletics events, most recently the European Athletics Junior Championships in July 2013. On a national level, they have hosted the full profile national championships since 2004.
The Italian Federation is working to re-launch the image of athletics and promote it towards the next generation of athletes and fans. The European juniors was a first step in this direction and hosting the youth championships 2016 would continue to build on this.
Preparations are already underway in Tbilisi, Georgia, as the city will host the European Athletics Team Championships 3rd League 2014 and then the European Youth Olympic Festival in 2015 for which the new 'Athletics Stadium of Tbilisi' is being built. For both these competitions, the same team of workers will be responsible for organising the events.
The Georgians believe it is important for their country to host the youth championships athletics as a step towards integration into Europe through sport.