Kirsty Gilmour is in Delhi for the BWF World Championships 2026, starting August 17
Kirsty Gilmour’s tattoos chronicle her career, from Olympic memories to medals
The Scottish shuttler arrives as European champion, chasing her first world crown
Ask Kirsty Gilmour about her career and she doesn't reach for words first. She rolls up a sleeve, turns an ankle, points to her ribs. The story is already written there, in ink – a croissant for Paris, dots to denote the titles and medals, and much more.
Gilmour is in New Delhi for the BWF World Championships 2026. This is not her first time in the city. Sixteen years ago, as a 17-year-old, she played her first senior Commonwealth Games right here. The two visits sit at opposite ends of a career that is still being written.
Kirsty Gilmour's Body Of Work
For Gilmour, every big year, every heartbreak, every milestone eventually ends up somewhere on her skin.
One catches the eye before the rest – a few letters, upside down, meant to be read only by her. They say, “make good choices.”
“I think this is the one that people ask me about the most. It's my right way up, so it's upside down for everyone else because this one's for me. This one is from the 2019 film version of Little Women. It's like Saoirse Ronan's necktie and collar,” she told Outlook India.
The next one takes the Scottish shuttler home. “It is a landscape of the north coast of Scotland, near a town called Lossiemouth. It's a phone box on the bridge that leads to the beach,” she said.
Medals have found a place on her skin too, marked out as small dots alongside her Olympic rings tattoo. “Olympic rings for Rio, and major medals or titles. I have three to add on. From last year's Europeans, Scottish Open and this year's Europeans,” she giggled.
There is a Mount Fuji for Tokyo 2020, while a croissant marks Paris 2024. A small piece honours the bronze won at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.
The ribs offer something a little more stereotypical. “I have a plant pot and an infinity sign because I'm a white girl on my ribs here,” she added.
The ankle carries the quietest one, hidden from view most days. “And then on my ankles I have it's gonna be okay. But I wear long socks so no one can see them,” she said.
A Career Written In Silver
When she walked in for the media interaction, she was wearing silver earrings, silver rings, enough to make her look every bit the silver girly. But the 32-year-old Scot has spent most of her career collecting silver of a different kind, medal after medal, final after final, and she did not come to Delhi to match her outfit to her CV.
A Commonwealth Games silver in Glasgow, 2014. A bronze four years later in Gold Coast. Six silver medals at the European Championships stretched across a decade, from La Roche-sur-Yon in 2016 to Saarbrucken in 2024. A European Games silver in 2019 too. Close, repeatedly, but never quite there.
That changed in 2026, when Gilmour beat Denmark's Line Kjaersfeldt in the final in Huelva to finally claim European Championship gold. The European champion is careful not to overstate what one title changes.
Talking about the win and how it has helped her and Scottish badminton, she said, “It's hard to say how much that's helped in four months. But I hope that that will be a little kind of checkpoint. That might be the springboard to something bigger for Scottish badminton.”
“For me, I think I've spent a lot of my career being defined by silver medals. And nearly and almost. But I think it's really nice to have something on my CV that is definitive, and I can just say that I'm European Champion. It's just a very kind of calming thing for me to be able to definitely say about myself and my career,” Gilmour said.
At the BWF World Championships, the Scottish veteran is chasing something “definitive.” She is chasing “gold.”
2010 CWG, 2026 Worlds: The Delhi Connection
This is Gilmour's tenth World Championships. Her first came in 2013, in Guangzhou, in what she now looks back on as a golden generation of women's singles players.
“In that World Championships I played against Tai Tzu Ying. She was pretty young at that point, and of course she's retired now, but she was very much a part of that generation. I think it speaks to the quality that was there so young, and how we've managed to carry it all the way through to now,” she said.
But Delhi holds an older, more personal marker in the veteran's career. Long before this World Championships, this city gave her one of her first real tastes of senior international competition.
“Delhi 2010 Commonwealth Games was one of my first tastes of world competition, when I had just turned 17, which wasn't yesterday. I played a senior Commonwealth Games and then the year after played the junior Commonwealth Games. So that wasn't the right way around at all,” she said.
Coming back to Delhi now feels like a full-circle moment for the Scot. “Every time a Commonwealth Games comes around it's quite a full circle moment for me. I think Commonwealth Games holds a really special place in my heart. It was a huge part of my development for sure to come to Delhi,” she added.
Her job back in 2010 was simple. “My job in Delhi CWG was to play as much badminton as possible. I was 17, I played double singles and mixed. And it was just minutes on court,” she said.
“And that helped me so much going into the next Commonwealth Games in my home city of Glasgow 2014, when I found myself as the second seed. If I hadn't had that Delhi experience then it would have maybe been a whole different ball game for sure,” she added.
Sixteen years on, the 32-year-old is back in the same city, older and sharper. “I'm the oldest I've ever been right now,” she said, without a trace of regret in her voice. It sounds instead like a player who has made peace with time, and still has more medals left in her.
Chasing Zero Flags
Gilmour is part of the LGBTQ community, and she has become one of badminton's clearer voices on the subject. In Delhi, that part of her identity followed the shuttler from the court into the hotel lobby.
“The hotel that we're staying at, the Lalit, has a massive LGBT elephant in the lobby. And all the staff wear LGBT flag pins and everything. To most people that stay in the hotel that would just maybe not really register or not be that important. But for me, and I know Kira on our team is also part of the LGBT community, it's just a little comfort to us to know that we're not going to be treated any differently,” she said.
“Although here, the culture is to say ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am.’ Sometimes, if I’m wearing a hat, I’ll get ‘sir/ma’am’ -- just to cover it all.”
She wants that comfort to spread further across the region. During the Commonwealth Games, she worked with Pride House on an exhibition called Zero Flags, mapping every country where being LGBT remains illegal.
“They're hoping to get to zero flags. I would really love to see some progress in Asia in general,” she said.
For now, the flags at stake are the ones hanging over the courts of the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium. The BWF World Championships 2026 gets underway on August 17, and the Scottish shuttler will be chasing a world crown.
