Competitors are on their marks for the 2019 World Para Athletics Grand Prix which will start in Dubai in February ©Getty Images

The World Para Athletics Grand Prix series enters its seventh year in 2019 with nine events scheduled to take place around the world between February and August, ahead of the World Para Athletics Championships in November.

The season kicks off in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from February 24-27 – in the same stadium that will host the World Championships just over eight months later.

The 2019 series is then set to move to Sao Paulo, Brazil and the city’s Paralympic Training Centre, which has hosted the Grand Prix since 2017.

The competition is provisionally scheduled for April 25-27, although it is still to be officially confirmed.#

Third up is the Beijing Grand Prix in China from May 10-12, where many of China’s top stars from the 2018 Asian Para Games in Indonesia are expected to line up.

China topped the Para athletics medals table in Jakarta – as well as the last two World Championships and four Paralympic Games – and the Beijing Grand Prix could well provide a valuable opportunity to find out which Chinese Para athletes can be expected to excel come World Championship time.

Keita Tezuka of Japan competes in the 400m men's final earlier this year at the World Para Athletics Grand Prix in Dubai - which will host the opening event of the 2019 Grand Pri on Feb 24 before staging the World Championships eight months later ©Getty Images
Keita Tezuka of Japan competes in the 400m men's final earlier this year at the World Para Athletics Grand Prix in Dubai - which will host the opening event of the 2019 Grand Pri on Feb 24 before staging the World Championships eight months later ©Getty Images

After China, the series shifts continents once again, this time to Arizona, in the United States, and Nottwil, in Switzerland.

The Arizona State University hosts the Grand Prix on  May 24-25.

US wheelchair racer Daniel Romanchuk smashed the men’s 800m T54 world record there in 2018 and the 20-year-old will certainly be one to watch in 2019.

On the same weekend, Para athletes will also go head-to-head in Nottwil for three days of track and field action from May 24-26, with less than six months to go to Dubai 2019.

In the last two years alone, 14 world records have been broken at the Nottwil Grand Prix, which continually attracts many of the best wheelchair racers in the world.

Grosseto, Italy is up next, making a return to the Grand Prix calendar for the first time since 2016 – the same year the Carlo Zecchini Olympic stadium hosted the European Championships.

The event takes place at the newly renovated track from June 8–9.

The 2019 series then goes to Africa for the seventh Grand Prix of the year in Tunis, Tunisia from June 28-30 June before returning to European shores for the final two Grands Prix of the season in August.

The Friedrich Ludwig Jahn Sportpark in Berlin, Germany – the scene of the 2018 European Championships – hosts the penultimate Grand Prix of the season on August 10–11.

Para athletes will be given one final chance to test themselves against major rivals ahead of the World Championships at the final stop on the calendar – in Paris , from August 29–30.

The Stade Charléty first hosted the Grand Prix series in 2017, and quickly became a popular destination for many of the world’s best including Brazilian sprint star Petrucio Ferreira, who smashed the 100m T47 world record there in 2018.