Russia Plans Nationwide Digital Passport System for Athletes

The country is developing a unified database to track every step of an athlete’s career — from their first training session to their professional achievements.

Russia has begun developing an innovative digital passport system for athletes — a centralized database designed to store detailed information about a competitor’s career trajectory. The platform will cover everything from early training sessions to professional milestones, giving coaches new tools to monitor performance dynamics over time.

Medical professionals will also gain access to this data, enabling them to design individualized recovery and treatment programs based on each athlete’s complete medical history. According to Vasily Petrov, the Minister of Sports for the Chuvash Republic,

 - he told the Russian news agency TASS.

The upcoming platform will be integrated with existing registries, allowing for tighter oversight of training processes and the development of future sports stars. It’s part of a broader push toward digitization in Russia’s documentation systems.

The project builds on the country’s ongoing rollout of a national electronic ID card for citizens — a plastic card embedded with biometric data, including social security details (SNILS), taxpayer identification (INN), fingerprints, retinal scans, and multi-angle photographs. Additionally, Russians can already use digital copies of their driver’s licenses via the “Gosuslugi.Auto” mobile app. Federal authorities plan to legally equate electronic documents with their paper versions in the coming years.

For the sports sector, the introduction of digital passports could mark a turning point, bringing unprecedented data-driven insights into athletic development and future talent scouting.