Paris 2024: Games of XXXIII Olympiad Will Start on July 26

11,475 athletes from 206 countries will compete in 45 sports disciplines

The 2024 Olympic Games in Paris will officially begin on Friday, July 26, with the opening ceremony, which for the first time in history will take place not in a stadium, but will consist of a boat parade down the Seine.

11,475 athletes will be present, 5,842 men and 5,633 women, who will compete in 45 sports disciplines and 35 competition venues: the sport with the highest number of accredited athletes is athletics, with 2,132 athletes (1,091 men and 1,041 women), followed by another symbolic sport. Swimming has 857 athletes at the Games, followed by rowing with 503, and cycling motocross will be the least represented sport with just 25 athletes.

206 National Olympic Committees have joined the International Olympic Committee (IOC), but Russia and Belarus will not be present this year; the few athletes of these two nationalities who will participate (36 Russians and 24 Belarusians) will compete as individual athlete neutrals (AINs). There will also be a refugee Olympic team, represented for the first time at Rio 2016, with 36 athletes from 11 countries.

Paris has four single-athlete delegations: Belize, Liechtenstein, Nauru, and Somalia. The largest delegation is that of the USA with 592 athletes, ahead of France with 573 and Australia with 460 athletes. As for sports disciplines, there are 5 new ones at the Olympics: sport climbing, skateboarding, surfing, three-on-three basketball, and breakdancing.

The Olympic Games will close on August 11, at which time the Organizing Committee expects 9.7 million viewers (and billions of TV viewers), 350,000 hours of live coverage, 6,000 accredited journalists, 45,000 volunteers, and more than 600,000 meals to be served each day in the Olympic Village and Paralympic Games. The Paralympic Games will be held from August 24 to September 10, 2024.