Male contenders are Qatar's Mutaz Essa Barshim, Great Britain's Sir Mo Farah and South Africa's Wayde van Niekerk, while the female contenders are Ethiopia's Almaz Ayana, who won last year, Greece's Ekaterini Stefanidi and Belgium's Nafissatou Thiam.

The results will be announced at the IAAF Athletics Awards in Monaco on November 24.

Last year's male award went to Jamaica's Usain Bolt, the sixth time he has won the title.

2016 also saw Kenya's Tegla Loroupe win the first IAAF President's Award, having been the inspiration of the refugee team at Rio 2016, for which she was Chef de Mission.

Barshim is a high jumper who is the national record and Asian record holder with a best mark of 2.43 metres. 

He won a gold medal at the 2017 World Championships, a silver medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics and a bronze medal at London 2012. 

Distance runner Sir Mo is the most decorated athlete in British athletics history, with ten global titles, and was the first British athlete to win two gold medals at the same World Championships, although Dame Kelly Holmes had achieved the feat at an Olympic Games.

His five gold medals at the European Athletics Championships make him the most successful athlete in individual events in the championships' history. 

He has won the European Athlete of the Year award, and the British Athletics Writers' Association British Athlete of the Year award, more than any other athlete, three times and six times respectively. 

He is the 2012 and 2016 Olympic gold medallist in both the 5,000metres and 10,000m and is the second athlete in modern Olympic Games history, after Lasse Virén, to win both the 5,000m and 10,000m titles at successive Olympic Games. 

Sir Mo also completed the "distance double" at the 2013 and 2015 World Championships. 

He was the second man in history, after Kenenisa Bekele, to win long-distance doubles at successive Olympics and World Championships, and the first in history to defend both distance titles in both major global competitions.

Sir Mo was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2013 and was knighted by the Queen in the 2017 New Year Honours list for services to athletics.

Van Niekerk is a 200m and 400m sprinter who is Olympic champion in the latter and also holds the world record for the rarely-run 300m.

Van Niekerk was the silver medallist in the 400m at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games and also represented South Africa at the 2013 and the 2015 World Championships, where he won gold in the 400m. 

He defended this title in London in 2017, where he also won silver in the 200m.

In the Rio Olympics he won gold in the 400m in a world record time of 43.03 seconds, beating that set by American Michael Johnson during the 1999 World Championships.

In 2016 he became the first, and to date only, sprinter in history to run the 100m in under 10 seconds, the 200m in under 20 seconds and the 400m in under 44 seconds.

Long-distance runner Ayana broke the 10,000m world record, set in 1993, while winning gold in Rio 2016.

At the 2017 World Championships in London, she won gold in the 10,000m, finishing 46 seconds ahead of the runner-up.

In May 2015, Almaz ran a personal best of 14:14.32 over 5,000m at the IAAF Diamond League meeting in Shanghai, China, improving upon her previous personal best of 14:25.84 set in 2013 in Paris.

This made her the third-fastest female athlete over that distance, behind compatriots Tirunesh Dibaba, the world record holder, and Meseret Defar.

Stefanidi, a pole vaulter, won the gold medal at the 2016 Olympic Games with a jump of 4.85m.

She is the current World Outdoor, European Outdoor and Indoor champion and a World Indoor Championships medallist. 

Stefanidi has won a total of seven medals in major championships and, in September 2016,  won the lucrative Diamond League series.

Two years after a disappointing performance at the 2015 World Championship where she missed the final, Stefanidi won the gold medal at the 2017 World Championships in London, where she even broke her own Greek record by vaulting 4.91m. 

She completed her 2017 outdoor season undefeated, with 14 wins in a row and won the Diamond League final in Brussels for the second consecutive year. 

In October 2017, at the European Athletics Federation gala in in  Lithuanian capital Vilnius, she was voted European Athlete of the Year.

Thiam holds the Belgian record in women's heptathlon and women's javelin. 

In August 2016 she won gold in heptathlon in Rio 2016 with 6,810 points, achieving a personal best in five of the seven disciplines and defeating Britain's reigning Olympic and World champion Jessica Ennis-Hill.

She was elected Belgian flag bearer at the Closing Ceremony.

In March 2017, Thiam won the pentathlon at the 2017 European Indoor Championships, in Belgrade, and August she won the heptathlon at the 2017 World Championships in London, becoming the first Belgian to win a World Athletics  gold.