BWF World Championship: Why France is home to the most flamboyant badminton posters

Taj Ma Bad – punning on Taj Mahal, designed by agency EK after Sindhu won the 2019 title for Jouy le Moutier. The poster celebrated Lord of wisdom Ganpati, with shuttles for his diadem and modaks and all zen Baddhists (badminton lovers). (Picture Courtesy: quandlebadsaffiche.org blog by Baillette Frédéric)

A year earlier, graphic designer Aline Hinh had produced another banner for the same shuttle-mad club, called La Esmeralda, with an Andalusian flamenco dancer in bright red with three rows of circular ruffles made of badminton shuttles.

With Carolina Marin winning the world title that year, the local French club decided to paint the town Spanish for their two-day weekend celebratory tournament.

French sport loves to splash creative spin-offs from its trademark annual events like Tour de France, Roland Garros tennis as well as rugby and football classics – from local derbies to World Cups, all of whom find an outlet in posters. While the French Open tennis has always been heralded by an avant garde sketch, all geometric, classy and subtle with iconic san serif typefaces eschewing frills, and Tour de France plays vividly on its jerseys, plastering yellow, green, white and red polka dots on all manners of architecture, badminton loves going berserk with outlandish themes – from horror to hustle to Hollywood.

Flamenco dancer soon after Carolina Marin’s third Worlds crown, designed for Jouy le Moutier club by Aline Hinh. (Picture courtesy: quandlebadsaffiche.org blog by Baillette Frédéric)

This year’s World Championship in Paris puts the badminton court inside a bowl of a giant shuttle.

Moreover, even the smallest club tournament, with just a paired event and 200-odd entries, held in a suburb of not more than 10,000, will go to great lengths to furnish a fabulously detailed poster on the chosen theme.

Curiously, they aren’t even looking for attention or advertising. “These posters remain fairly confidential. Apart from those issued by the French Badminton Federation (FFBaD) for national or international events, these posters are not widely distributed. They circulate on the social media of the clubs involved in the tournament (mainly Facebook and Instagram), and then disappear. Few are printed. If they are, it’s often only in small numbers and in small sizes,” says French badminton historian Frédéric Baillette, who carefully catalogues them all on his blog.

While the actual badminton isn’t an afterthought, these illustrations seem to exist independently and aren’t unduly swayed by the sport’s reigning icons. The themes could be topical, but the motifs aren’t imprisoned by calendars or time.

World Championship official poster by FFBad & Agence Comquest Celestial shuttlecock with arena. (Picture courtesy: quandlebadsaffiche.org blog by Baillette Frédéric)

Back in the day

The first sports-themed posters in France surfaced between 1870-85, and were sales pitches for bicycles. But the Tour de France has for long turned to sunflowers, the national symbol rooster, a shape-bending Eiffel Tower, giant yellow jerseys, and the Pyrenees landscape. One of the most memorable TdF posters had an arching Triomphe and four cyclists – in yellow, (king of mountains in) red polka, (best sprinter in) green, and (best new rider in) white as arches passing under the monument. There are reams written on a single handlebar moustache of a cyclist on a Tour poster from one year.

Badminton battled a ridiculous perception too. The oldest badminton poster dates back to the 1930s. However, it wasn’t created for a tournament, but by the fledgling federation in 1934 for a promotional campaign, according to Baillette.

“In France, badminton was just taking off, and the general public considered it a child’s game, especially for little girls. The poster countered this image by asserting that badminton was ‘a real sport’! A sport for combative men. A virile sport. It was created by one of the great poster artists of the time Maurice Lauro (1878-1934),” he says, of the frame of a black court and a man in white flannels smashing.

The first ever badminton poster put out by the French Federation to bust the myth that badminton was a garden sport played only by women or children. (Picture courtesy: quandlebadsaffiche.org blog by Baillette Frédéric)

An unusual poster showed up in 1995, with scary sun-eyes on a Spongebob-like figure and a shuttle whizzing as if on rocket fuel, sketched by painter Thierry Odriozola for his local Toulouse club.

Since the 1900s, posters of all kinds were widespread (festive, commercial, but also patriotic and political). This strong drive got reflected in an increase in private tournaments (regional and national) and, consequently, posters to promote them.

Some were humorously named: “Tournoi des Moustachu.e.s”, “Qui paire gagne!”, “Gangs à plumes,” etc. to showcase this creativity. The French Badminton Federation is launching the ’10 Most Beautiful Badminton Posters Competition’ where a committee will select the most artistic posters in June 2026, as per Baillette.

While specialised agencies are hired to design for international meets, contemporary well-known artists, like Jofo, get commissioned.

“Most quality posters are the work of local artists, professional or semi-professional graphic designers, and most often (young) amateurs who use image-creation software. Almost all of them are badminton players and create these posters for their favourite club like Nicolas Terlon, Stéphane Macario, Thomas Pontois, or even Magali Salètes and Christophe Noël.”

AI has intruded here too, and Baillette declares, “They are certainly pleasing to the eye, but often lack soul and character.”

The creations are adapted to the theme chosen for a tournament (Veterans, Halloween, Horror, Christmas, also ‘Bad Christmas’ and Spring).

Designed by Maxime Fontaine for Horror Tournament, 2022, of Taverny Saint Leu on 20 October just ahead of Halloween. (Picture Courtesy: quandlebadsaffiche.org blog by Baillette Frédéric)

National phenomenon

Bailette, a physical education teacher at a middle school in a small village in the south of France became interested in badminton in the early 2000s after their school won four French Championship, and he formed a small club of 40 members. The posters, however, are always popping up from different corners of France. In every prefecture, there is at least one tournament every weekend, bringing together between 150 and 300 players.

The Ganpati badminton poster put the club on the map. “The organisers named their tournament “Taj Ma Bad!!” (a pun on Taj Mahal), which inspired the graphic designers to depict Ganapati. In the end, a zen poster and one of the most beautiful badminton posters ever made,” he says.

More than the racquet, perhaps the conical shuttlecock, with its feathery texture, lends itself magnificently to art. But also, the French capacity for re-imagining is copious. An annual doubles meet by Ivry-sur-Seine badminton club fitted in the whole Pokémon universe – Pikachu, Ash Ketchum and all the ghosts and birds playing the sport on their poster one year.

Shuttles have turned into waves under a canoe, hot air balloons, inflated V-Day hearts, delicate petals of spring, foraging herbs, space-bound rockets and even superimposed on superhero leitmotifs – Batman and ‘Badvengers’. A movie poster of the film Kick-Ass acquired badminton elements, while the Cannes shuttle club annually releases one of its uber-chic posters, with the red carpet fashioned into a badminton court, or a formal bow tie with geese feathers or a hairpin like a shuttle. Shuttlecocks have made it to Christmas posters, re-purposed in different creative ways.

The movie ground zero city of Cannes also hosts an annual badminton tournament. Designer and graphic artist Patrick Parault made this in 2014 to coincide with Japanese manga Hanebado. (Picture Courtesy: quandlebadsaffiche.org blog by Baillette Frédéric)

The Worlds poster has a Parisianised shuttlecock, housing a badminton court on its rooftop, with stylised equipment and some champagne. Japanese anime, especially Hayao Miyazaki, gets revisited often by poster designers; one enterprising club Rambervillers made a poster like a memory-list of what all should go into a badminton kitbag. Halloween tournaments are quite popular, and the posters go gory with the shuttle making do for knives to behead with blood splotches and all forms of zombie paraphernalia.

Roland Garros has had a few memorable ones since the 1980s, with a crayon back of Bjorn Borg’s orange hair with a headband, and cut bicep contours and defined muscles of a clay-courter, with a flaming ball in multicolor by Vladimir Velickovic.

Tennis posters, however, exude minimalism and pointed fonts with one central feature – the fuzzy ball, the red courts, the crowd silhouettes, and a microscopic texture of the net. It’s one defining poster per year, while badminton bustles and buzzes every weekend.