Officially: Brisbane will host 2032 Olympic Games

Brisbane, the third-most populous city in Australia, will host the 2032 Olympic Games.

This decision has been made today at the 138th Session of the International Olympic Committee.

The Olympic Games returns to Australia after 32 years. Before Brisbane, two Australian cities were hosts of the Games (Melbourne in 1956 and Sidney in 2000).

“The Session, operating under strict coronavirus protocols, accepted the proposal of the IOC Executive Board, made on 11 June, that Brisbane should host the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games in 2032”, the IOC has announced today.

This city was the only candidate for a host of the Games of the XXXV Olympiad. Only formal approval by the IOC was missing.

Brisbane 2032 was the first “Preferred Host” under the IOC’s new approach to host city elections. The IOC changed its bidding rules in 2019 to reduce costs and make the process easier for cities. There were no official candidate cities campaigning ahead of the vote as has been the case in the past decades. Instead, the IOC put the “Preferred host” to a vote at its session.

On 24 February 2021, Brisbane was chosen by the IOC to be a preferred candidate city to host the 2032 Olympic Games. Last month, it was announced that Brisbane would be set to receive the rights to host the Olympics by 21 July 2021, which happened today.

“Brisbane 2032 is the first future host to have been elected under, and to have fully benefited from, the new flexible approach to electing Olympic hosts. The reforms enable the IOC to work in partnership with cities, regions, and countries, to encourage Olympic projects which use a high percentage of existing and temporary venues, which align with long-term development plans, and which have a strong vision for sports and local communities.”, IOC President Thomas Bach said (source IOC Press Release).

Proposed dates for the Olympic Games are 23 July–8 August 2032, with the Paralympic Games running from 24 August–5 September 2032. Events are proposed to be held across 37 venues.

Besides Brisbane, several cities and regions were interested in hosting the 2032 Olympic Games. Still, their bids did not advance to IOC Board approval: Madrid (Spain), Ahmedabad (India), Jakarta (Indonesia), Doha (Qatar), Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region (Germany), Budapest (Hungary), Istanbul (Turkey), North-Central Italy (Italy), Rotterdam and Amsterdam as one candidate (Netherlands), London (Great Britain), Salla (Finland) Montreal and Toronto as one candidate (Canada), Chengdu (China) and Shanghai (China).

The 2024 Olympic Games will be held in Paris. Los Angeles will be the host in 2028.

More articles about the Olympic Games