Vietnam's weightlifting team flew to Ningbo, China, on 25 October for the 2026 World Weightlifting Championships with a squad of five: Nguyen Hoai Huong and Quang Thi Tam (both 23), Tran Minh Tri (22), K’Duong (19) and Nguyen Thanh Duy (17). According to SGGP, the championships run from 27 October to 8 November with 531 lifters from 99 teams, and they are the first competition whose results count towards the qualification ranking for the 2028 Olympics.
That turns a world championship trip into the opening move of a race for Olympic places that lasts until May 2028.
Two hopes at 65kg
Tri won bronze in the men's 65kg at the 20th Asian Games (ASIAD 20), and Duy is a gold medallist from the 2025 Asian Youth Games. SGGP describes them as the two key names the team is relying on for a shot at world medals this year, and as the pair expected to build ranking points in the men's 65kg, one of six men's classes on the Olympic programme.
Huong, Tam, K’Duong and Tri went straight back into an intensified training load after returning from the Asian Games, with coaches using their snatch and clean-and-jerk numbers from that event to fine-tune preparations.
Nguyen Huy Hung, who oversees weightlifting at the Vietnam Sports Administration, told SGGP that each lifter has a technical target for the championships. He described the group as young athletes with real potential who are being given the chance to compete and collect ranking points with Olympic 2028 places in mind.
The road to Olympic 2028
According to SGGP, the Olympic Qualification Ranking (OQR) period set by the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) runs from 27 July 2026 to 7 May 2028 and is split into two phases. A lifter's ranking in an Olympic weight class is built from their three best totals in Phase 1 and their two best totals in Phase 2. The milestones published so far:
| When | Event |
|---|---|
| 27 July 2026 | OQR period opens |
| 27 October to 8 November 2026 | 2026 World Championships in Ningbo, the first scoring event |
| December 2026 | Olympic 2028 qualifying event |
| February 2027 | Second qualifier |
| June 2027 | Third qualifier |
| November 2027 | Fourth qualifier |
| 2027 | 2027 Asian Championships and 2027 World Championships |
| 7 May 2028 | OQR period closes |
How the 120 places are shared out
The IWF has confirmed 12 Olympic weight classes: men's 65kg, 75kg, 85kg, 95kg, 110kg and over 110kg, and women's 53kg, 61kg, 69kg, 77kg, 86kg and over 86kg. Each class has 10 lifters, 120 in total, and a country can enter only one lifter per class.
| Route | Places |
|---|---|
| Top eight in each class after the qualifying events | 96 |
| Highest-ranked lifters on the world ranking not already qualified | 6 men, 6 women |
| Host nation, the United States | 3 men, 3 women |
| IWF invitational places | 3 men, 3 women |
The Ningbo championships have 16 classes, eight for men (60kg to over 110kg) and eight for women (49kg to over 86kg), more than the Olympic programme. Ranking points are counted within each Olympic class, so the class a lifter chooses now shapes the rest of the campaign.
What it means for Vietnam
At the 2024 Olympics in France, Vietnam had one quota place in weightlifting, through Trinh Van Vinh. The goal for 2028 is more than one. The one-lifter-per-class rule also means that if Tri and Duy both stay at 65kg to the end, Vietnam can send at most one of them in that class; reaching two or more places will depend on lifters who can compete in other classes.
What's next
Vietnam's lifters compete in Ningbo during the championships, which run from 27 October to 8 November. After the worlds, the next scoring stop is the Olympic qualifying event in December. For Tri's Asian Games result, see Tran Minh Tri wins Asian Games 65kg weightlifting bronze.