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Paris and the Paris region will be making use of 95% of existing infrastructure in order to reduce impact on the environment. Therefore, very few sites have been built or renovated for the organization of the Summer 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Among the existing sports venues is the Roland-Garros stadium, where all the tennis tournaments (27 July to 4 August 2024) and wheelchair tennis events (30 August to 7 September 2024) will take place, as well as the final rounds of boxing events from 6 to 10 August 2024, to be held on the Court Philippe Chatrier.
The Parc des Princes is the chosen venue for the Olympic football tournaments (men’s and women’s) from 24 July to 10 August 2024. The gold-medal matches will be held there.
The Accor Arena, which has been renamed Arena Bercy for the duration of the 2024 Paris Games, is a sports and cultural venue the general public is very familiar with, as it hosts concerts by the biggest international stars as well as top-notch sporting events such as the Rolex Paris Masters tennis tournament and the Paris Grand Slam judo tournament. During the 2024 Paris Games, the final phases of the basketball competition (6 to 11 August 2024), the artistic gymnastics competition (27 July to 5 August 2024), the trampoline events (2 August 2024) and the wheelchair basketball competition will take place at the Arena Bercy.
The one and only Stade de France, an Olympic stadium par excellence, is the setting in which the vast majority of athletics events will take place. Will the men’s 100 metres world record, currently held by Usain Bolt of Jamaica, be beaten? Will the Swedish pole vaulter Armand Duplantis better his own world record? We’ll find out during the athletics competitions from 1 to 11 August 2024. Meanwhile, the men’s and women’s rugby sevens teams will be on the pitch at the Stade de France during the Olympic tournament from 24 to 30 July 2024. As for the para athletics competitions, they will be held from 30 August to 8 September 2024.
Prestigious sites with ultra-modern infrastructure in Greater Paris such as the Golf National, le Vélodrome National and the Yves-du-Manoir stadium will respectively be hosting the golf tournament (1 to 10 August 2024), the track cycling events (5 to 11 August 2024) and the field hockey matches (27 July to 9 August 2024).
Paris and its environs themselves make up a competition venue. The athletes taking part in the marathon – on 10 August 2024 for the men and on 11 August 2024 for the women – will gather on the majestic and festive Hôtel de Ville square, from where they will run through the streets of Paris and the Paris region during the legendary 42,195 km race. The route passes the Palais Garnier, the Louvre, the Grand Palais, Trocadéro, the Château de Versailles and the Eiffel Tower and comes to an end on the Esplanade des Invalides.
Several of the capital’s iconic spots are being transformed into ad hoc stadiums for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Place de la Concorde, with the 3,000-year-old Egyptian Luxor obelisk at its centre, has been chosen as the venue for some spectacular new sports: 3x3 basketball (30 July to 5 August 2024), BMX freestyle (30 and 31 July 2024), breaking (9 and 10 August 2024) and skateboarding (27 and 28 July 2024, and then 6 and 7 August 2024). The Eiffel Tower stadium (approximately 13,000 spectators) has been created in the Parc du Champ-de-Mars between the Eiffel Tower and the École Militaire. Spectators here will be able to cheer on the players during the beach volleyball (27 July to 10 August 2024) and (men’s only) blind soccer (30 August to 7 September 2024).
A business tourism capital, Paris boasts top-notch conference centres and exhibition venues. During the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, some of them will be transformed into competition venues. For example, in Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, Halls 1, 4 and 6 will respectively be renamed Arena Paris Sud 1, Arena Paris Sud 4 and Arena Paris Sud 6. The first will host part of the Olympic volleyball tournament (27 July to 11 August 2024) and the Paralympic boccia tournament (9 August to 5 September 2024). The second will host the Olympic and Paralympic table tennis tournaments (Olympic tournament from 27 July to 10 August 2024 and Paralympic tournament from 29 August to 7 September 2024). The third will host the impressive weightlifting competition (7 to 11 August 2024), the preliminary phases of the men’s and women’s handball tournaments from 25 July to 4 August 2024 (the final phase is to held from 6 to 11 August 2024 at the Pierre Mauroy stadium in Lille) and the Paralympic goalball tournament (29 August to 5 September 2024). The Parc des Expositions de Paris Nord Villepinte will also be transformed into a sports arena during the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Renamed Arena Paris Nord for the duration of the Games, it will be the setting for boxing matches (the preliminary phases from 27 July to 4 August 2024), the modern pentathlon fencing bouts (on 8 August 2024) and sitting volleyball matches from 29 August to 7 September 2024.
The Grand Palais is one of the competition venues that is undergoing a renovation in order to host Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games events. The building next to the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, which was inaugurated during the 1900 World’s Fair, generally hosts major artistic and sporting events under its magnificent glass roof. It is to re-open in 2024 just before the Paris Olympics, during which it will host the fencing (27 July to 4 August 2024) and taekwondo (7 to 10 August 2024) events as well as the Paralympic versions of these two sports.
While the renovation work is underway at the Grand Palais, people are enjoying the programme of events at the Grand Palais Éphémère, a temporary structure. Located across the way from the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Palais Éphémère, designed by the architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte, will be renamed Arena Champ-de-Mars during the 2024 Paris Games. Spectators will cheer on the world’s top judo players here from 27 July to 3 August 2024 and the best male and female wrestlers from 5 to 11 August 2024. It is also in this arena that para judo (5 to 7 September 2024) and wheelchair rugby (29 August to 2 September 2024) athletes will vie for the gold medal. The Grand Palais Éphémère will be dismantled after the Paris 2024 Games.
Besides the construction of the Olympic Village, three new venues that will become a permanent part of the urban, cultural and sporting landscape of Greater Paris are also being built.
The Arena Porte de la Chapelle is the first of these new venues. It is located in the 18th arrondissement, on the border between Paris proper and the Paris region. It will be home to the Paris Basketball club when it opens in 2023. It will be the ecologically designed setting for sporting as well as cultural events. It is here that the general public will watch the badminton (7 July to 5 August 2024) and rhythmic gymnastics (8 to 10 August 2024) competitions during the Olympic Games. People will then come to cheer on the para badminton athletes from 29 August to 2 September 2024 and the para powerlifting athletes from 4 to 8 September 2024.
The Bourget climbing venue in the Seine-Saint-Denis département is the only sports facility to be built specifically for the Paris Olympics. Located to the north-east of the capital and easily accessible, it will be the exclusive competition venue for the new sport of sport climbing. The competition events will take place on two sets of dates: 5 to 8 August 2024 for speed climbing and 5 to 9 August 2024 for bouldering and lead combined.
The Aquatics Centre in Saint-Denis is the last of the venues built specifically for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. It is located next to the Stade de France and the two venues are connected by a footbridge spanning the A1 motorway. During the Paris 2024 Games, people will be able to watch some key events here, such as diving (27 July to 10 August 2024), artistic swimming (5 to 10 August) and some of the water polo matches (27 July to 4 August 2024).
In 2024, Paris will have some new sports at the Olympic and Paralympic Games. There are four of them and we can already look forward to an extraordinary show, with athletes keen to win the first Olympic medals in the history of their sport!
Head to the temporary stadium on Place de la Concorde to admire the dazzling displays by the B-boys and B-girls, practitioners of a new Olympic sport: breaking. The athletes will face off in the course of spectacular battles with DJs providing the soundtrack. To be held on 9 and 10 August 2024.
Concorde will also host the equally spectacular skateboarding, which made its entry into the Olympic line-up during the Tokyo Games 2020. The sport was born in the United States in the 50s. It became increasingly popular over the years and eventually became an Olympic sport. Male and female skaters will face off during two distinct competitions: street skateboarding (27 and 28 July 2024) and park skateboarding (6 and 7 August 2024).
This sport essentially practised by young people brings a breath of fresh air to the Olympic programme. Two competitions are on the programme at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games: boulder and lead combined (5 to 9 August 2024) and speed (5 to 8 August 2024). Imagine seeing the athletes climb walls up to 15 metres high with their bare hands in record time! The events will take place at the brand-new Bourget climbing venue only a few kilometres from Paris.
Surfing will be the only Olympic sport of the Paris 2024 Games to take place in Tahiti, the largest island in French Polynesia. Specifically, it will be on the Teahupo’o wave, reputed to be one of the toughest in the world, that male and female surfers will fight for a spot on the Olympic podium. Spectacular manœuvres and figures judged on the basis of variety, speed and difficulty will be performed on shortboards. The events will take place from 27 to 29 July 2024.
After crossing the Mediterranean Sea, the Olympic Torch landed in France on 8 May 2024, in Marseilles, where its journey across France began. It will pass through iconic sites such as the prehistoric site of Lascaux, Alesia in Burgundy, the medieval city of Carcassonne, the unmissable Mont Saint-Michel, the city of Versailles and its castle before arriving in Paris on 26 July 2024 for the lighting of the Olympic cauldron, after a journey of 12,000 kilometres. It should be noted that, from 8 to 17 June 2024, the flame will leave mainland France to cross Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, French Polynesia and Réunion as part of the Oceans Relay. Olympic Torch Relay route.
The opening ceremonies of the Olympic and Paralympic Games are eagerly awaited events.
Eagerly awaited by spectators and television audiences around the world, the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games are performances in their own right. The two opening ceremonies for the Paris 2024 Games, created by artistic director Thomas Jolly, promise to be a truly grandiose and unique spectacle.
In what will be a first in the history of the summer Olympic and Paralympic Games, the opening ceremonies will take place outside the traditional stadium setting – in the centre of the host city!
Paris’s iconic River Seine will be at the heart of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, since the waterway will provide the venue for the opening ceremony. For the first time in the history of the Olympic Games, this ceremony will take place outside the stadium. The public will be able to greet the athletes as they take part in a spectacular nautical parade. A flotilla will transport the athletes six kilometres along the river from the Austerlitz bridge to Trocadéro, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, for an unforgettable grand finale! Save the date: 26 July 2024! Some of the expected 600,000 spectators will be able to view the show free of charge from the upper quays of the Seine. Tickets for the lower quays of the Seine and certain bridges are on sale on the official ticketing platform.
The opening ceremony for the Paralympic Games is expected to be just as grandiose. It will take place on the lower section of the avenue des Champs-Élysées and Place de la Concorde on 28 August 2024. More than 4,000 athletes from 184 delegations from all over the world will parade down the Champs Élysées towards Place de la Concorde, where a stunning show awaits spectators.
Whether you’re a sports fan or love a good show, but also for the beauty of the moment, don’t miss these two exciting events.
The key Parisian celebration sites unveiled:
