Third place in the world. 727 points. Four points behind silver, four behind gold. This is Jonas Wenter’s final result at WorldSkills Shanghai 2026, in the Cabinetmaking discipline – competitive joinery. This result came at the end of four days of competition and an international event that brought around 1,400 young professionals to Shanghai from 73 countries and regions, competing in 64 disciplines. These figures immediately convey the scale of the event: WorldSkills is the leading international event dedicated to vocational skills, bringing together young talent, training providers, businesses and education systems on the same stage. And against this backdrop, Jonas Wenter finished on the podium.
Four points from the top
The official Cabinetmaking rankings leave little room for interpretation. Germany’s Tobias Kelz took the top spot with 731 points. Second was Qi Sheng Chen from Taiwan with 730. Third was Jonas Wenter, representing Team South Tyrol, Italy, with 727 points. WorldSkills 2026 Behind him, with 723 points, came Sijia Zhang from China, followed by Alexander Häggman from Finland on 722. These figures clearly illustrate the calibre of the performance. In Cabinetmaking, simply finishing the task is not enough: every cut, every joint, every stage of assembly and finishing contributes to the final result. And when the gap between the top three is just four points, the margin separating one medal from another really comes down to precision. The official competition description defines Cabinetmaking as the ability to work with wood to create high-quality furniture and components, combining precision, accuracy, creativity and aesthetic sensibility. This is precisely the arena in which Jonas competed against the world’s finest young professionals.
Four days, 64 craft professions, a single stage
Jonas’s medal was won at the 48th WorldSkills Competition, held in Shanghai from 23 to 26 September, with the opening ceremony on 22 September and the closing ceremony on 27 September. The 2026 edition took the competition to a whole new level: 64 skills, around 1,400 competitors and international participation involving nearly 70 countries and regions. The organisers also highlighted the presence of over 1,300 experts and the record-breaking size of the National Exhibition and Convention Centre, with around 360,000 square metres spread across 11 pavilions. These are impressive figures, but WorldSkills is not merely a competition. The organisation itself presents it as an international platform for promoting technical and vocational training, bringing together young people, schools, businesses and institutions. Alongside the Competition, Shanghai also hosted the WorldSkills Conference, attended by over 50 ministerial-level representatives and around 2,000 delegates from governments, international organisations, vocational schools, training bodies and businesses. In other words, whilst competitors were battling it out over the finer details of their craft inside the pavilions, discussions outside the workshops centred on a much broader issue: how to develop and promote the skills needed for the jobs of tomorrow.
Wenter: from the Italian squad to the world podium
Jonas Wenter’s journey to Shanghai was built on his day-to-day work. Born in 2005 and originally from Collepietra in Val d’Ega, Jonas won first place in the Italian competition in 2025, thereby securing his place to represent Italy in the Cabinetmaking category. Coach Jonas Prinoth was by his side throughout his preparation. Renner Italia has supported this journey as the official sponsor of the Italian cabinetmaking team, following Jonas as he prepared for Shanghai and providing tangible support for the WorldSkills project. Renner Italia: a partnership rooted in a shared foundation – that of cabinetmaking and the culture of wood.
Jonas’s bronze medal makes the headlines in Shanghai
Wenter’s achievement was reported by the South Tyrolean media, where his medal was highlighted alongside the gold won by Liam Fiechter in the Multimedia Design category and the other awards secured by the delegation. RaiNews TGR Bolzano ran a headline on South Tyrol’s haul from Shanghai, listing ‘one gold, one bronze and eight medals of excellence’, explicitly naming Jonas Wenter as the third-placed carpenter. On 9 October at the Bolzano Exhibition Centre, Wenter and the Italian delegation to Shanghai 2026 will be welcomed and celebrated by a community that feels a deep connection to this event.
A detail that remains
Then there is one statistic which, more than any other, captures the sporting nature of this competition: 731, 730, 727. Three scores. Three medals. Just a handful of points separating the podium places. In Cabinetmaking, the difference does not lie in the speed of a sprint or the power of an athletic manoeuvre. It lies in the precision of the workmanship, the accuracy of the assembly, the quality of the finish, and the ability to maintain concentration and control throughout four days of competition. It is a competition in which the stopwatch counts, but so does every millimetre. And this is perhaps the most accurate way to view Jonas Wenter’s bronze medal: not simply as a placing, but as the numerical result of a performance that left him just four points short of the world title.
A medal has been won in Shanghai. And a tradition continues
WorldSkills Shanghai 2026 drew to a close last weekend with the closing ceremony and the presentation of medals across the 64 disciplines. The organisers described the event as a global celebration of skills, with 1,400 young professionals gathering to compete on the international stage. For Renner Italia, Jonas Wenter’s bronze medal also marks the culmination of a journey that began long before they arrived in Shanghai. A journey made up of training, practice, trials, refinements and daily hard work. Just as it is in the joinery trade. The podium came at the end of four days. But a medal like this is forged long before that: in the workshop, at a workbench, when no one is watching the stopwatch and every detail simply has to be done right. In Shanghai, Jonas Wenter brought that work to the world stage.
