The 1981 World Judo Championships were the 12th edition of the Men's World Judo Championships, and were held in Maastricht, Netherlands from 3–6 September, 1981.

Event	Gold	Silver	Bronze
-60 kg	Yasuhiko Moriwaki	Pavel Petřikov	Felice Mariani Phil Takahashi
-65 kg	Katsuhiko Kashiwazaki	Constantin Niculae	Hwang Jung-Oh Petr Ponomarev
-71 kg	Park Chong-Hak	Serge Dyot	Karl-Heinz Lehmann Vojo Vujevic
-78 kg	Neil Adams	Jiro Kase	Kevin Doherty Georgi Petrov
-86 kg	Bernard Tchoullouyan	Seiki Nose	David Bodaveli Detlef Ultsch
-95 kg	Tengiz Khubuluri	Robert van de Walle	Ha Hyung-Joo Roger Vachon
+95 kg	Yasuhiro Yamashita	Grigory Verichev	Vladimir Kocman Juha Salonen
Open	Yasuhiro Yamashita	Wojciech Reszko	Andras Ozsvar Robert van de Walle

Rank	Nation	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1	Japan (JPN)	4	2	0	6
2	Soviet Union (URS)	1	1	2	4
3	France (FRA)	1	1	1	3
4	South Korea (KOR)	1	0	2	3
5	Great Britain (GBR)	1	0	0	1
6	Belgium (BEL)	0	1	1	2
	Czechoslovakia (TCH)	0	1	1	2
8	Poland (POL)	0	1	0	1
	Romania (ROM)	0	1	0	1
10	Canada (CAN)	0	0	2	2
	East Germany (GDR)	0	0	2	2
12	Bulgaria (BUL)	0	0	1	1
	Finland (FIN)	0	0	1	1
	Hungary (HUN)	0	0	1	1
	Italy (ITA)	0	0	1	1
	Yugoslavia (SFR Yugoslavia)	0	0	1	1
Totals (16 entries)		8	8	16	32

• 1981 World Judo Championships at the International Judo Federation
• 1981 World Judo Championships at JudoInside.com
• videos found by de.video.search.yahoo.com retrieved December 10, 2013