The international governing body revealed the award aims to recognise event organisations in a year of unprecedented challenges, roadblocks and disruptions brought on by the global COVID-19 pandemic.

The three events were nominated to show the organisers efforts to meet those challenges and provide competitive opportunities for athletes and entertaining events for fans around the world.

"Necessity has been the mother of invention for all of us in this pandemic year and we have seen some really creative initiatives and programmes from our athletes and our event organisers, who have had to reinvent their operations and surmount huge obstacles in order to provide competition for our athletes and fans, which is the lifeblood of our sport," Sebastian Coe, World Athletics President, said.

"We wanted to recognise their enormous resilience and creativity this year by presenting this special award to one of those events that have been exceptionally innovative this year."

The World Athletics Council selected the three nominations.

The Herculis Wanda Diamond League meeting in Monaco was put forward with World Athletics claiming the event overcame unprecedented public health and safety concerns, global travel restrictions and painful budget cuts to stage their annual competition.

The event marked the start of the heavily interrupted Diamond League season on 14 August and saw Uganda's Joshua Cheptegei break the men’s 5,000 metres world record in front of a crowd of 5,000 spectators.

The event featured 132 athletes, including 13 reigning world champions.

A total of 36 countries participated in the event despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, with 14 world-leading performances achieved at the meeting.

Of those 14 performances, 11 remained the year’s best performances at the end of the season.

The Ultimate Garden Clash has also been nominated, with the innovative event having been established by Renaud Lavillenie and fellow pole vaulters.

World Athletics backed the series which featured separate men's and women's pole vault competitions and a triathlon event with three of the world's best decathletes.

The men's pole vault edition on May 3 featured world champion Sam Kendricks, world record-holder Mondo Duplantis and former world record-holder Lavillenie.

Athletes competed from their respective training bases, with coverage streamed live on social media platforms.

The event was the world's first high-level "live" athletics competition since global lockdowns went into effect in March, and attracted more than one million viewers from more than 90 countries in the first 24 hours.

The World Athletics Half Marathon Championships in Gdynia completes the list of nominations.

The World Championships was postponed from its original March date due to the pandemic, with organisers forced to continually adapt its plans.

Local organsiers and World Athletics eventually held the event on October 17, which featured a first-of-its-kind health and safety protocol.

The event attracted 225 athletes from 54 teams, the second-highest at these Championships since the 1998 edition.

Peres Jepchirchir of Kenya broke the world record for a women-only race while four Championship records, two area records and 21 national records were also set.

The winner will be selected via a public vote on World Athletics Facebook, Twitter and Instagram social media platforms.

The combined number of votes from all three platforms will determine the winner.

Voting has opened today and will close at midnight on November 15.

The winner is due to be announced at the World Athletics Awards 2020 to be held virtually on December 5.