The 2024 Summer Olympics (French: Jeux olympiques d’été de 2024), officially the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad and officially branded as Paris 2024, is an ongoing international multi-sport event taking place from 24 July to 11 August 2024 in France, with the Opening Ceremony taking place on 26 July. Paris is the main host city, with events held at 16 other cities spread across Metropolitan France, plus one subsite in Tahiti, French Polynesia. Paris 2024 will feature the debut of breakdancing as an Olympic event, and will be the final Olympic Games held during the IOC presidency of Thomas Bach. The 2024 Games are expected to cost €9 billion.
Most of the Olympic events will be held in the city of Paris and its metropolitan region, including the neighbouring cities of Saint-Denis, Le Bourget, Nanterre, Versailles, and Vaires-sur-Marne. The basketball preliminaries and handball finals will be held in Lille, which is 225 km (140 mi) from the host city; the sailing and some football games will be held in the Mediterranean city of Marseille, which is 777 km (483 mi) from the host city; meanwhile, the surfing events are expected to be held in Teahupo’o village in the overseas territory of French Polynesia, which is 15,716 km (9,765 mi) from Paris, the host city. Football will also be hosted in another five cities, which are Bordeaux, Décines-Charpieu (Lyon), Nantes, Nice and Saint-Étienne, some of which are home to Ligue 1 clubs.
The opening ceremony is scheduled to start at 19:30 (CEST, GMT+2) on 26 July 2024. This will be the second time in history that the opening of the Olympic Games will be held outside a stadium, the first being the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics opening ceremonies. The parade of nations is planned to be held during a boat parade along the Seine from Pont d’Austerlitz to Pont d’Iéna, and the official protocol to take place at Place du Trocadéro in a temporary “mini-stadium”. An estimated 320,000 spectators are expected to line the banks of the Seine River to witness the passage of 80 boats carrying renowned athletes. The 6-kilometre (3.7-mile) parade route will feature the cultural elements of the ceremony and views of Paris landmarks. The ceremonies of the 2024 Summer Olympics and Paralympics will be directed by Thomas Jolly.
Organisers have promoted the ceremony as “the most spectacular and accessible opening ceremony in Olympic history”, with COJOP2024 president Tony Estanguet stating that it would be free to attend, estimating that it could attract as many as 600,000 spectators –exemplifying an overall goal for Paris 2024 to be a “people’s Olympics”. There will be 100,000 ticketed spectators at viewing spots on the lower banks of the Seine, and approximately 200,000 spectators at free viewing spots on the upper banks (in addition to being visible from other public locations and buildings). In March 2024, due to security concerns, the French government ordered that access to the upper bank locations be by invitation only, and in April 2024, President Macron stated that the ceremony could be scaled back or held in a conventional manner at Stade de France, if necessary.
The programme of the 2024 Summer Olympics will feature 329 events in 32 sports, including the 28 “core” Olympic sports contested in 2016 and 2020, and four optional sports that were proposed by the Paris Organising Committee: breaking will make its Olympic debut as an optional sport, while skateboarding, sport climbing, and surfing will return from 2020. Four events have been dropped from weightlifting. In canoeing, two sprint events have been replaced with two slalom events, keeping the overall total at 16. In sport climbing, the previous “combined” event has been divided into separate speed climbing and boulder and lead disciplines for each gender.
The closing ceremony is scheduled to be held at Stade de France on 11 August 2024. The ceremony will be titled “Records”, and is set to feature more than a hundred performers, including acrobats, dancers, and circus artists. The cultural presentation by Los Angeles, host of the 2028 Summer Olympics, will be produced by Ben Winston and his studio Fulwell 73.
