A major Olympic shakeup was announced by International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Kirsty Coventry Thursday following a two-day Executive Board meeting held at headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. The Youth Olympic Games (YOG) host election process has been paused as the IOC rethinks its entire youth strategy and the Olympic Esports Games, which at one time was set to premier in 2027, has been put under executive control to determine its fate.
Asunción in Paraguay, Bangkok in Thailand and Santiago in Chile were being considered to host the 2030 YOG after they were invited into the IOC’s targeted dialogue phase of the bid process in December. The three cities had been preparing for a June election as part of an IOC Extraordinary Session.
“We need to pause and have a real reflection on why we’re doing the Youth Olympic Games and we realized that across the Movement it’s very disjointed. There’s not a true North Star of why we’re doing the Youth Olympic Games,” Kirsty Coventry told reporters during an online press conference.
“So the EB decided to pause the 2030 process right now so there will not be an election in June, and rather we need to take a step back and develop a youth strategy.”
The YOG were launched in Singapore in 2010 and include athletes typically from 15 to 18 years of age. More than 3,000 competitors from over 200 nations in 20 to 30 sports are involved in the Summer event. The Winter YOG debuted in 2012 in Innsbruck, Austria with over 1,000 athletes representing about 70 nations in seven sports.
The YOG have been considered an incubator for new sports popular with young people. The sport of breaking was held successfully at the Buenos Aires 2018 YOG before it debuted at the Paris 2024 Summer Games. The event has also aided the development of young athletes who went on to succeed in the senior Games including United States’ snowboard champion Chloe Kim and Chinese ski Champion Eileen Gu.
The Youth Olympics have also been an opportunity for nations to host an Olympic event when the marquee Games were out of reach. The next edition of the YOG is scheduled in Dakar, Senegal from October to November 2026 – the first Olympic event ever to be held in Africa – and a Winter edition is planned for Italy’s Dolomiti Valtellina in 2028.
“We are fully committed to the Youth Olympic Games in Dakar coming up very shortly and to those in 2028 in Italy and we’ll continue to work with them, but we felt that it was the right time, instead of awarding any future Games to really look at what it is we want this event to be for us and what it is we want to develop and how we want to really and truly engage with the young audiences around the world,” Coventry said.
No timeline for the restructuring of the IOC’s youth strategy was given.
Olympic Esports Games
The yet-to-debut Olympic Esports Games that seemed to be on a very promising trajectory as recently as last year, is now questionable.
“It is very much alive,” Coventry told GamesBids.com about the Esports Games after confirming reports that the designated Esports Commission had been disbanded.
“Esports is sitting under my Executive Office. I have been working with an expert in the field.
“But for now we are focusing in on our core business and trying to make strong future strategies for the core business first while still working very clearly on what potential there could be for esports and what that would look like.”
The Olympic Esports Games were approved by the Paris IOC Session in 2024, paving the way for a recurring event that would be staged starting in 2027. Sports officials from Saudi Arabia inked a 12-year deal with the IOC to host and finance the competitions. But last year the deal was mutually canceled with little explanation. Coventry ended the Esports Commission in January.
Despite limited success with an Olympic Esports Week event held in Singapore in 2023, Olympic esports has remained controversial with divided member support. Some have argued that esports do not represent Olympic values, and in an attempt to eliminate violence and other poor messaging that are often part of the games – only sport-related titles were proposed for inclusion, eliminating most popular games and alienating the gaming community.
Q Series
Also at the Executive Board meeting this week, the IOC approved the hosting plan for the 2028 Q Series – formerly Qualification Series – that will see qualification events for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics take place in four cities.
Tokyo in Japan, Shanghai in China, Montreal in Canada and Orlando in United States will share the staging of an expanded event that will include 3×3 basketball, beach volleyball, BMX freestyle, climbing, skateboarding and flag football that will be included in the Olympics for the first time. The location of each sport will be announced at a later date.
The schedule is as follows:
Stop 1: Tokyo, 4–7 May 2028
Stop 2: Shanghai, 11–14 May 2028
Stop 3: Montreal, 1–4 June 2028
Stop 4: Orlando, 8–11 June 2028
The inaugural 2024 Qualification Series took place in Shanghai, China and Budapest, Hungary.
