Eight national federations were responsible for the formation of FINA: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary and Sweden.

[19] The center is scheduled to be finished by the end of 2026, but the organization intends to move some of it to the Hungarian capital in the second half of next year.

[30] World Aquatics also permits athletes not affiliated with a member federation to compete at events under the 'Athlete Refugee Team' banner.

[35] The World Aquatics Bureau consists of the President and thirty-nine (39) Bureau Members: Various committees and commissions also help with the oversight of individual disciplines (e.g. the Technical Open Water Swimming Committee helps with open water), or topic-related issues (e.g. the World Aquatics Doping Panel).

[36] The organization signed an agreement with the Hungarian government in May 2023, planning to relocate its headquarters from Switzerland to Budapest, Hungary.

World Aquatics also organizes separate tournaments and series for individual disciplines, including competitions for juniors.

[41] World-level championships restricted to a younger age, with the age limit varying by discipline and gender: In 2017, FINA officially renamed the sport of synchronised swimming as Artistic Swimming for its competitions to reflect the expansion in evaluation criteria in the sport to include not only synchronization but other elements such as choreography and artistic expression.

[5][46] In relation to anti-doping rule violations, World Aquatics does enact suspensions on athletes who are retired from their respective sport at the time of ban implementation, with examples including Lithuanian Rūta Meilutytė (2019–2021) and Russians Artem Lobuzov (2021–2025), Alexandra Sokolova (2021–2025), and Artem Podyakov (2021–2025).

FINA also announced the development of a separate "open" category for some events, to be determined by a working group over the next six months, so that "everybody has the opportunity to compete at an elite level".

[57][58][59] The decision was criticized as "discriminatory, harmful, unscientific and not in line with the 2021 IOC principles" by LGBT advocacy group Athlete Ally.

As a result, Zhou was ordered by in a FINA Ethics Panel decision[63] to write a letter of apology to Wright.

[63] A recommendation was also made by the Ethics Panel to disestablish Zhou's position as Diving Bureau Liaison for FINA.

The FINA Ethics Panel stated that the incident during the men's platform final was "unfortunate" and led to a "misunderstanding mixed with misjudgement" between Wright and Zhou.

[64] In May 2022, former international diver, Olympic judge and previous member of FINA's Technical Diving Committee from New Zealand Simon Latimer revealed he had sent a whistleblower complaint[65] to FINA's Executive Director Brent Nowicki in December 2021 detailing Zhou's alleged "unethical behavior" which also contained allegations that Zhou has routinely coached Chinese divers during major events such as the Olympics and World Championships and she had manipulated judging panels in order to benefit Chinese athletes.

Subsequent to Latimer's complaint, video evidence emerged online showing Zhou coaching Chinese divers during competition sessions at the 2020 Summer Olympics, a behavior considered unethical given her supposedly neutral role as a FINA Vice President and Diving Bureau Liaison.

In 2024, a member of the World Aquatics' anti-doping advisory body said that it was "inexplicably and forcibly shut out of the review" concerning positive tests from 23 Chinese swimmers in the lead-up to the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics.

[71][72] In July 2024, World Aquatics confirmed that its executive director was subpoenaed to testify to U.S. authorities as part of a criminal investigation into the Chinese swimmers' doping tests.