WorldSkills Lyon 2024: team France on the lead podium

“Showing the world that jobs are an awesome tool for professional and personal development, but also a mean to foster social relations, share knowledge and skills, and generate growth.” This is how WorldSkills qualifies itself, and it even wants to be “more than a competition”: a series of events “unifying, mobilising and engaging all participants, players and representatives of professional training”. The competition contributes to turn WorldSkills into a “true springboard” for the promotion of objectives and values such as “excellence, dedication, fairness and equality”.

Four areas of action

WorldSkills Lyon 2024, is highly committed in the promotion of learning, professional training and mobility, and aims at “being part of the future” by supporting projects and initiatives capable of leaving “a lasting and tangible legacy” in four areas:

• Francophonie (French-speaking world culture), by improving cooperation between French-speaking industrial and economic players;
• international, by developing cultural exchanges and sharing professional practices all over the world;
• intercontinental, by supporting the development of skills on the African continent;
• Europe, by joining the European momentum of development and professional training.

According to organisers, there’s everything to turn WorldSkills Lyon 2024 in “an event that is as much European as French”.

Six economic sectors and 59 occupations in competition

France becomes a “world hub” of occupations and vocational training! For a week, the city of Lyon played the role of world skills capital, highlighting “the excellence of young people’s skills as a means of supporting economic recovery”. From pastry-making to cybersecurity, and including trades in industry, services and construction, the WorldSkills competition “provided an opportunity to (re)discover trades that are essential to everyday life”. More exactly, competitors from 70 countries “competed with passion” in six economic sectors and 59 different occupations:

- creative arts and fashion;

- construction and building technology;

- social and personal services;

- manufacturing and engineering technology;

- information and communication technology;

- transportation and logistics.

All these practical demonstrations turned Lyon’s Eurexpo exhibition centre in a “true crossroads of know-how and talent”. The French Ministry of labour also explains that the “massive participation of young people” was another outstanding feature of this year’s event: a record 61,000 young people in training attended the event.

37 medals for France

At the end of the competition, the French team came third, with over than 30 medals! According to the Ministry of labour, this third place is “international recognition for the French WorldSkills team, as well as for French vocational training as a whole”.

France did particularly well, winning a total of 37 medals, including 6 gold, 4 silver, 3 bronze and 24 medals of excellence. With this very respectable score, France climbed to the third step of the world podium, becoming the leading European nation in this competition. According to the Ministry of labour, the results of WorldSkills 2024 will help the country “build on this momentum to boost the attractiveness of vocational courses and accelerate the development of apprenticeships”.

The closing ceremony and medal presentations ended with the handover of the WorldSkills flag to the city of Shanghai (China), which will host the world competition in 2026.

Explore more: 

- Press release from the French Ministry of labour

- WorldSkills’ official website