A century after the last Olympic Games in Paris, France’s capital will once again be the venue for the major event this summer – for the third time after 1900 and 1924. When the XXXIII games take place on July 26th. When the Olympics open in Paris, a lot will be new, including not just sports and disciplines.
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These are the first Olympic (July 26th – August 11th) and Paralympic Games (September 28th – 8th – 8th) in which as many women as men are registered. Gender equality has never existed before. At the Paris Games in 1900, women took part for the first time: a total of 22 of the 997 athletes. The opening ceremony, among other things, also offers a novelty. Below you will find an overview of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
Opening ceremony Paris 2024
The Olympic Games will take place from July 26th to August 11th, 2024 instead of. Traditionally, the opening ceremony takes place in a stadium – but not this time. The national delegations are to be sailed across the Seine in boats; from the Pont d’Austerlitz bridge to the Trocadéro at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. Once there, the athletes will walk along the Champs-Élysées to the Place de la Concorde, where the spectacle continues. The artistic director of the opening and closing ceremonies is the French theater director Thomas Jolly.
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2024 Olympic Games schedule
The first competitions begin on Wednesday, July 24th: handball, rugby sevens and football. Things usually start in and around Paris from 8 a.m., with the last competitions of the day ending shortly before midnight.
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The first medals will be awarded on Saturday, July 27th: in judo, fencing, skateboarding, road cycling, swimming and shooting. The finals in the core Olympic sports of athletics (August 1st to 11th) and swimming (July 27th to August 4th) will be held in the evening, with a few exceptions in athletics.
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The finals in handball and basketball are scheduled for August 6th to 11th. The football finals on August 9th, from 6 p.m. (men) and on August 10th, from 5 p.m. (women). The water polo and volleyball teams have their medal games on August 10th and 11th, the last weekend of the Olympics.
Olympic sports and disciplines: This is new
Baseball and softball as well as karate, which were included in the program for the Tokyo Games, are no longer included. Climbing, which celebrated its premiere in Tokyo, no longer consists of the combination of bouldering, lead and speed climbing, which was very controversial from the start, but now consists of a two-way combination of bouldering and lead and a separate speed rating.
The only new sport is breaking (breakdancing). The competitions consist of battles between 16 athletes, which are played one-on-one. It is not yet clear whether German athletes are qualified. The B-Girls Jilou and Pauline still have a chance.
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There are also new disciplines in sailing (kitesurfing) and canoeing (extreme slalom) as well as other changes. These include, among other things, a new weight class in women’s boxing, but one less for men, and a mixed walking relay instead of the men’s 50 kilometer competition.
Sports venues: Grand Palais, Eiffel Tower, Palace of Versailles and more
The majority of the competitions take place directly in Paris, some just outside. However, there is also a competition that is held 15,000 kilometers away: surfing, which has been Olympic since Tokyo 2021, takes place on the coast of Tahiti in the South Pacific. Two German surfers, Camilla Kemp and Tim Elter, also qualified.
Many an Olympic medal is awarded at historical sites:
Well-known sports venues such as the Stade de France and Roland Garros are also locations. Preliminary round games in football will be played in Bordeaux, Nantes, Lyon, Saint-Etienne, Nice and Marseille, and in handball and basketball in Lille; and the sailors line up in front of Marseille.
Olympic sports venues: Will everything be finished on time?
The Olympic Village has already been inaugurated and most of the infrastructure has been completed. 95 percent of the competition venues were already in place; the two major new buildings are the La Chapelle Arena for badminton and rhythmic gymnastics and the Aquatics Center for water polo, diving and synchronized swimming.
There may be concerns about whether the opening ceremony of the games in the middle of the Seine can take place as planned for security reasons.
It is questionable whether the water quality of the Seine will ultimately be sufficient to allow the open water and triathlon competitions to start there as planned. In the summer of 2024, the mixed relay test triathlon had to be turned into a duathlon – it was the third event before the Olympic Games that was affected by too high a concentration of E. coli bacteria in the water.
Paris 2024 and the topic of environment and sustainability
The organizers of the 2014 Paris Games are basing their goals on the Paris Climate Agreement and aim to halve CO2 emissions compared to the average for London 2012 and Rio 2016. IOC member Albert II of Monaco writes in a WELT guest article: “It won’t work without a CO₂ footprint. But the Games will set new standards and drastically reduce climate-related emissions.”
The building blocks of the concept include:
Russia and the Olympics: Will Russian athletes start in Paris?
Because of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, athletes from Russia and Belarus are only allowed to take part in the Olympic Games in Paris under certain conditions. Flags, anthems and other state symbols are prohibited. The athletes are not allowed to have any ties to the military and teams are not allowed. No government representatives from Russia and Belarus will be invited to the games.
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In March, the IOC also decided that approved neutral athletes from Russia and Belarus would not be allowed to take part in the opening ceremony. But you would have the opportunity to “experience the event,” explained James MacLeod from the IOC, without providing any further details.
Paris 2024: broadcast on television
The transmission rights are included Warner Bros. Discovery, so that the Olympic competitions can be seen live again on free TV on Eurosport 1. The public broadcasters have acquired sublicenses and will also broadcast the Paris Olympics on free TV, and there will be live streams on the Internet.
Olympic tickets: When and how can you purchase them?
There are still tickets available for the Olympic competitions, although the remaining tickets are yet to be put online on the official Paris 2024 ticket website – with a few days’ notice. If you then want to buy a card, you have to be quick. First come first serve.
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An exchange for the resale of admission tickets will also be launched in mid-May, so that there is still a chance of getting tickets for competitions that have already been sold out or you can get rid of a purchased ticket.
Team sports: who is qualified?
Both the German women’s and men’s national teams have already qualified from the sports of basketball, hockey and table tennis. The German women’s soccer players are also there, while the men’s U21 did not qualify for the first time since 2012. The volleyball players around Georg Grozer also made it – for the first time since 2012; the women only have a chance through the rankings.
The men recently took advantage of their last chance in handball and can also plan for Paris. The women can follow suit: They have to compete in the Olympic qualification on April 11th against Slovenia, on April 13th against Montenegro and a day later against Paraguay.
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No German teams were represented at the Olympic premiere of 3×3 basketball in Tokyo. The Paris starting places will be awarded via the rankings and qualifying tournaments in May. The qualification phase for beach volleyball does not end until June.
At the Paralympics it looks like this: The German men’s sitting volleyball and the wheelchair rugby team have secured their starting place. In April, both wheelchair basketball teams and the women’s sitting volleyball teams can follow suit.
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