World Skate is the official governing body for the popular and wide range of disciplines that all fall under roller sports. Some of these examples include skateboarding, rink hockey, inline hockey, inline speed skating, roller derby, roller freestyle, freestyle scootering, inline figure skating and artistic roller skating. The history of World Skate goes back to April 1924 when the Fédération Internationale de Patinage a Roulettes (FIPR) was created to focus on managing rink hockey competitions. A few federations were already informally managing events, but the objective of FIPR was to bring these together under one roof and create direction and uniformity to the sport.  

By 1936 the federation took a major step forward with the management of the first World Championship in Stuttgart, Germany. Two years later the United Kingdom hosted the Track Roller Speed Skating World Championship. Switzerland hosted the second Rink Hockey World Championship a year later. In September 1939 World War II started, and it was only until 1947 that roller sports resumed with a Rink Hockey event in Portugal and a Roller-Skating World Championship in Washington, USA. The three disciplines continued to have regular World Championship events on every continent in the world and by 1995 the fourth discipline of Inline Hockey was identified with a World Championship in Chicago, USA.  

The sport took a further major step forward with the first World Roller Games in 2017 hosted in Nanjing, China. Over 3,000 athletes attended from 61 federations with 10 sports represented. The second edition followed two years later in Barcelona and on this occasion over 4,000 athletes attended from 76 national federations with 11 sports represented. FIPR changed the name in 1960 to the Fédération Internationale de Roller Skating (FIRS) and was also the year the federation became officially recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as the international governing body for all roller sports. It was at a World Congress in 2017 in Nanjing where the name World Skate was adopted. The sport achieved a breakthrough at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona where Rink Hockey was chosen as the demonstration sport. It was at the 2014 Youth Olympic Games where two roller sports were added and secured spots for the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires and for the future Olympic Games.