China’s General Administration of Sport Center for Sports Arbitration Releases 

Sports Arbitration Service Guide (2026)

On August 5, 2026, the China Commission of Sports Arbitration officially issued the Sports Arbitration Service Guide (2026), revising and updating the previous version. Centered on the practical needs of the parties involved, the new guide systematically optimizes fee schedules, submission standards, and document templates to further enhance the accessibility and standardization of sports arbitration services.

New Fee Guidance: Clear and Transparent Arbitration Costs.

A key highlight of this revision is the addition of comprehensive fee guidance. In the "Frequently Asked Questions" (FAQ) section, the guide explicitly outlines fee schedules, conditions for fee deferrals, reductions, or exemptions, and rules regarding cost bearing. Additionally, fee payment checkpoints have been integrated into the case acceptance flowchart, establishing an end-to-end visual roadmap from case filing to payment and helping parties clearly navigate each procedural step.

Refined Submission Requirements: Standardized Formatting and Phrasing Informed by Case Experience.

Drawing from case administration experience, the updated guide provides clearer instructions regarding arbitration applications, evidentiary materials, identification, and representation procedures. It advises parties to submit standardized materials in full on the first attempt, minimizing delays caused by supplementary submissions. Furthermore, the guide adds a reference catalog of common legal forms—providing direct access and download links for arbitration applications, powers of attorney, identity certificates of legal representatives, and more. The structure and terminology have also been systematically refined to enhance navigability, consistency, and ease of reference.

Jordanian Cabinet Approves Draft Amendment to Arbitration Law to Establish

 Amman's First Dedicated International Arbitration Centre

The Jordanian Cabinet recently approved a draft amendment to the Arbitration Law, paving the way for the establishment of the country's first dedicated international arbitration institution—the Jordan Arbitration Centre in Amman. The draft legislation serves as a key pillar of judicial modernization under Jordan's Economic Modernisation Vision. Although Jordan acceded to the New York Convention as early as 1958 and maintains a relatively well-developed arbitration framework and court-support mechanisms, the country has long lacked a permanent, dedicated domestic institution, leaving cross-border disputes largely dependent on foreign arbitration centers. This legislation aims to fill that institutional void.

Jordan's Minister of Justice, Bassam Talhouni, noted that the proposed centre will operate as a non-profit entity with legal independence as well as financial and administrative autonomy. It will adopt its own institutional rules aligned with internationally recognized standards, specializing in regional and international commercial and investment disputes.

Industry reactions to the move have been mixed. Omar Aljazy, former president of the Jordanian Arbitration Association and a member of the drafting committee, hailed the initiative as a major step forward for dispute resolution in Jordan and the wider region. However, other experts, including Amman-based attorney Rania Alnaber and US arbitrator Larry Anthony, expressed caution. They noted that arbitration centres in emerging markets are particularly prone to stall if established ahead of genuine market demand, adding that sustainable operation requires continuous financial backing and support from a specialized, bilingual case-management team. Alnaber emphasized that the true measure of success lies in whether commercial parties actively choose to select the centre in their contracts, rather than merely in the act of establishing the institution itself.

France Enacts Decree No. 2026-741 to Overhaul Arbitration System, 

Launching Process Toward an Independent Arbitration Code

On August 7, 2026, France officially issued Decree No. 2026-741 on the Clarification and Modernization of Arbitration, introducing comprehensive amendments to the French Code of Civil Procedure, set to take effect early next year. This marks France's first major arbitration reform since 2011. Based on 40 recommendations put forward by the working group led by Thomas Clay and Judge François Ancel, the decree implements the "three-stage" reform path announced by Minister of Justice Gérald Darmanin, aiming to ultimately consolidate rules scattered across nearly 20 legal codes into a unified, standalone "Arbitration Code."

The new decree introduces several modernization initiatives across both domestic and international arbitration: it significantly strengthens the powers of the supporting judge (juge d'appui) in enforcing interim measures and obtaining documents from third parties; clarifies the stage at which courts may assess the negative effect of the competence-competence principle, and permits the consolidation of multiple claims under different contracts before the same arbitral tribunal; broadens the definition of international arbitration from involving "international trade" to "international economic" interests, officially recognizes qualified electronic awards, and eases restrictions on exempting foreign-language hearings from translation; and clearly distinguishes between award recognition and the granting of an enforcement order (exequatur), optimizes the stay-of-execution mechanism, and introduces the principle of proportionality to prevent procedural delays and escalating costs.

To date, leading practitioners including Philippe Pinsolle and Louis Degos have warmly welcomed the reform; however, working group members such as Jérôme Ortscheidt have expressed reservations regarding the removal of the enforcement judge's power of modification, raising concerns over the potential impact of this change on Paris's attractiveness as an international arbitration centre.

Changsha Intermediate People's Court:

Framework Agency Contract and Its Constituent Purchase and Sale Contract Specifying Arbitration and Litigation Respectively Constitute "Either Arbitration or Litigation", Rendering Arbitration Agreement Invalid

Legal Basis:

"Arbitration Law of the People’s Republic of China"

Article 31

Where a party challenges the validity of an arbitration agreement, it may request the arbitration commission or arbitral tribunal to make a decision or request a people's court to make a ruling.

Where one party requests the arbitration commission or arbitral tribunal to make a decision while the other party requests a people's court to make a ruling, the people's court shall make the ruling.

A party's challenge to the validity of an arbitration agreement shall be raised before the first hearing of the arbitral tribunal.

Case Description：

Between 2024 and 2025, Company A, as the Marketing Authorization Holder (MAH) and manufacturer of the drug "Flunarizine Hydrochloride Oral Solution" (Approval No. Guoyaozhunzi H20020094), successively entered into two Regional Sales Agency Contracts for the years 2024 and 2025 with Company B. The contracts established a regional sales agency relationship between the parties, stipulating that Company B, acting as the agent, would distribute the drug directly to third-terminal retailers such as individual pharmacies, private clinics, village health stations, and community outpatient clinics. Company A undertook to guarantee Company B's regional distribution rights and ensure drug quality and steady supply; Company B undertook to develop the market, fulfill sales quotas, and strictly adhere to compliance obligations against unauthorized cross-region sales that disrupt the market. Drug procurement followed a "payment before delivery" model, under which Company B submitted a delivery application voucher upon payment. Regarding dispute resolution mechanisms, Article 8 of both agency contracts stipulated that any and all disputes arising from or in connection with the execution of the contract shall, failing friendly negotiation, be submitted to the Changsha Arbitration Commission for arbitration. Meanwhile, the contracts specifically stipulated that other documents separately executed by the parties during performance—such as governance schemes for online listing control and preventing cross-region sales, purchase and sale contracts, letters of guarantee, and warehouse entry/exit slips—constituted effective, integral parts of the agreement.

During subsequent actual performance, in order to implement specific procurement and shipment batches, the parties entered into multiple specific Purchase and Sale Contracts within each year. The subject matter of all these purchase and sale contracts was Flunarizine Hydrochloride Oral Solution, specifying concrete transaction elements such as purchase quantities, batch numbers, and amounts. However, regarding dispute resolution, these Purchase and Sale Contracts did not adopt the arbitration clause of the agency contracts; instead, they explicitly stipulated that any dispute arising from the performance of the contract should be submitted to the jurisdiction of the people's court at the supplier's domicile. Consequently, this created a situation where arbitration jurisdiction and litigation jurisdiction coexisted between the framework agency contracts and the specific execution purchase and sale contracts.

In January 2026, a substantive dispute erupted over contract performance. Company A claimed that Company B breached its obligations regarding sales region and channel management by engaging in serious unauthorized cross-region sales; Company B countered that it had paid over 400,000 RMB for goods, but Company A unjustifiably failed to deliver on time and withheld the payment. On January 29, 2026, Company A filed for arbitration with the Changsha Arbitration Commission based on the arbitration clause in the agency contract to pursue liability for unauthorized cross-region sales, docketed under Case No. [2026] Chang Zhong Zi No. 2352. During the arbitration proceedings, Company B raised a jurisdictional objection within the statutory defense period, but the Changsha Arbitration Commission did not render a decision on the objection.

To advance the arbitration proceedings, Company A filed an application with the People's Court requesting confirmation of the validity of the arbitration clauses in both agency contracts and confirmation of the Changsha Arbitration Commission's jurisdiction. Company A asserted that the arbitration clauses satisfied statutory formal requirements and possessed legal separability; disputes over cross-region sales pertained to framework agency management obligations, whereas the litigation clauses in the purchase and sale contracts only governed individual purchase transactions, meaning both operated in parallel without conflict and did not constitute "either arbitration or litigation." Company B responded that the agency contracts expressly incorporated the purchase and sale contracts as integral components, conferring upon them equal legal force; determinations of cross-region sales relied entirely on shipment data under the purchase and sale contracts as substantive evidence, and payment disputes fell under court jurisdiction, such that arbitration would split unified transaction facts and impair its right to counter-claims; thus, the overall contractual system contained conflicting provisions for both arbitration and litigation, rendering the arbitration clause legally invalid due to a lack of exclusivity.

Court's View:

Pursuant to Article 7 of the Interpretation of the Supreme People's Court on Several Issues Concerning the Application of the Arbitration Law of the People's Republic of China, where parties agree that a dispute may be submitted to an arbitration commission for arbitration or filed as a lawsuit with a people's court, the arbitration agreement shall be null and void, except where one party applies for arbitration and the other party fails to raise an objection within the period specified in Paragraph 2, Article 20 of the Arbitration Law. This provision establishes the principles of exclusivity and certainty in commercial dispute resolution methods, requiring parties to make a clear, definitive, and exclusive choice between arbitration and litigation. If contractual stipulations place the jurisdictional forum in a conflicting state of "either arbitration or litigation," the arbitration agreement is legally invalid.

Upon examination, the court found that both Regional Sales Agency Contracts expressly stipulated that the Purchase and Sale Contracts separately executed during performance constituted valid, integral components of the agreements. This provision demonstrates that subsequent purchase and sale contracts were directly absorbed into the agency contracts as indivisible components, collectively forming a unified contractual whole governing both parties' rights and obligations. Under this contractual framework, the agency contract, as the master agreement, provided that disputes be arbitrated by the Changsha Arbitration Commission, whereas the purchase and sale contracts, as constituent parts, provided that disputes fall under the jurisdiction of the people's court at the supplier's domicile. The parties failed to establish a clear, exclusive division of jurisdiction between framework management disputes and individual transaction performance disputes, effectively resulting in mutually exclusive dual stipulations of both arbitration and litigation for disputes arising under the same contractual system.

Given that Company B lawfully raised a jurisdictional objection within the statutory period after the arbitration commission accepted the case, without any circumstance indicating waiver of objection or acceptance of arbitration, the jurisdictional stipulations of the contracts at issue fully fell within the "either arbitration or litigation" scenario set forth in Article 7 of the judicial interpretation. The arbitration agreement in question is null and void due to a lack of exclusivity and certainty. Company A's claims requesting confirmation of the validity of the arbitration clause and confirmation of the Changsha Arbitration Commission's jurisdiction lacked factual and legal basis and could not be supported by the court. Accordingly, pursuant to Article 31 of the Arbitration Law of the People's Republic of China and relevant judicial interpretations, the court ruled to dismiss the application of the applicant, Company A.

Santiago Court of Appeals (Chile):

Arbitral Tribunal's Unauthorized Alteration of Legal Characterization and Relief Constitutes Ultra Petita, Ruling to Fully Annul $300 Million Arbitral Award

Case Description：

In 2019, Joyvio Foods, through its Chilean subsidiary Food Investment SpA, entered into a Share Purchase Agreement (SPA) with the sellers, completing the acquisition of leading Chilean salmon enterprise Australis Seafoods S.A. for USD 921 million. However, after closing the transaction and taking over operations, Joyvio discovered that the former controlling shareholders and management team (centered around the Isidoro Quiroga family) had deliberately concealed and falsified critical information during M&A due diligence. The concealed risks included severe overproduction in farming centers in violation of environmental permits, potential administrative sanctions from Chile's Superintendency of the Environment (SMA), and massive potential liabilities for ecological damage. These substantial hidden compliance risks directly caused a significant devaluation of the acquired target assets.

In response to these disputes, Joyvio initiated international commercial arbitration before the Arbitration and Mediation Center of the Santiago Chamber of Commerce (CAM Santiago) on January 16, 2023, pursuant to the arbitration clause in the SPA. In its initial arbitration request, Joyvio adopted a relatively narrow claim strategy, exclusively seeking damages for breach of contract on the grounds that the sellers breached the agreement's "representations and warranties" clauses by failing to disclose environmental compliance risks. However, after hearings in August 2025, the CAM arbitral tribunal declined to grant Joyvio's claim for contractual damages and instead invoked the principle of iura novit curia ("the court knows the law") to unilaterally alter the avenue of legal relief. The tribunal found that the sellers' concealment of environmental risks constituted a fundamental breach of contract, thereby recharacterizing the nature of the relief as restitution (restitutio in integrum), and, based on equitable principles, ordered a downward adjustment of the overall purchase price, ultimately ruling that the sellers pay Joyvio approximately USD 300 million (approximately USD 292 million).

Dissatisfied with the arbitral award, the sellers filed an application to annul the award before the Santiago Court of Appeals in Chile. On June 24, 2026, the First Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals rendered a judgment holding that the arbitral tribunal's actions constituted ultra petita and ruling to annul the award in its entirety. Following the annulment, Joyvio promptly adjusted its strategy and resubmitted an arbitration request to CAM Santiago on July 10, 2026, which was accepted, officially commencing a second arbitration. Meanwhile, on July 14, 2026, Joyvio confirmed its decision not to appeal to the Supreme Court of Chile and restructured its claims framework in the new arbitration filing by adopting a composite structure of "principal claims + multi-tiered alternative/fallback claims." Under this structure, it concurrently advanced multiple avenues of relief, including contractual damages, purchase price refund, premium adjustment, and restitution of unjust enrichment; the Chinese party had also completed its arbitrator nomination to avoid having the award annulled again due to procedural defects.

Court's View：

During its judicial review, the core issue before the First Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals was whether the arbitral tribunal's unilateral change of the avenue of relief under the principle of iura novit curia constituted ultra petita. The governing legal provision was Article 34 of the Chilean International Commercial Arbitration Act (Law No. 19.971), under which Paragraph 2(a)(iii) provides that an award dealing with a dispute not contemplated by or not falling within the terms of the submission to arbitration, or containing decisions on matters beyond the scope of the submission, constitutes grounds for annulment, and Paragraph 4 establishes that an award must be annulled in its entirety when the ultra petita portions cannot be severed from the valid parts. Ultimately, the court, by a 2-to-1 majority vote, upheld the annulment application and set aside the arbitral award in full.

The majority (two judges) held that the arbitral tribunal's conduct constituted a severe case of ultra petita and an incurable procedural violation. First, Joyvio's original arbitration claim was for damages arising from contractual breach, whereas the tribunal, through recharacterization, ordered restitution and a downward price adjustment, effectively transforming the claim into an obligation based on unjust enrichment or restitution of contractual effects. Because their legal foundations, constituent elements, and remedial logic are fundamentally different, the award exceeded the scope of the parties' requests; even though the final compensation awarded was close to the amount of damages originally sought, this could not cure the excess of authority in legal characterization. Second, the tribunal failed to discharge its duty of clarification/disclosure to the parties prior to changing the avenue of relief, depriving the respondent of the opportunity to provide targeted evidence and legal argument regarding the novel relief of "restitution/price adjustment," which seriously violated the respondent's right to due process. Finally, as the core and pillar of the entire award, the price adjustment was inextricably intertwined with the factual determinations and liability allocation, making partial annulment legally impossible and requiring the award to be set aside in its entirety.

In contrast, the dissenting judge (one judge) argued that the tribunal's recharacterization fell within the realm of the application of law and did not constitute an excess of authority or ultra petita. The dissent maintained that even if the shift in relief was flawed, the court, out of respect for the finality of arbitral awards, should have applied the doctrine of severability to annul only the portion concerning restitution, while preserving the tribunal's sound findings regarding the sellers' breaches of representation and warranty obligations. Nonetheless, by majority decision, the Santiago Court of Appeals held that the tribunal's recharacterization constituted ultra petita, ruling that remedies must neither exceed the scope of the parties' claims nor alter the core nature of the relief sought, and accordingly annulled the USD 300 million international commercial arbitral award in full.