Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony is backing a bid by the Hungarian capital to host the 2036 Olympics Games, but there’s a catch.
The Mayor confirmed his intentions on RTL television, according to Bloomberg, after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said his cabinet was ready to organize the Games if the city earned the right to host the event.
But Karacsony added that a bid would only be possible if the Prime Minister increases funding to the capital, much of which has been withheld from the city that is governed by the opposition party. The Liberal mayor won a second term in July extending tensions between the two governments and turning the Olympics bid into a pawn.
“Obviously, if the municipality of Budapest doesn’t support the Budapest Olympics, there will be no Olympics,” Orban said Saturday.
“If the Olympic Committee decides to bid for the Olympics, and if it’s backed by Budapest, then there is no doubt that the government will support it one thousand percent.”
A bid to host the 2024 Games was dismantled immediately after Budapest residents successfully petitioned for a referendum. Rather than face a risky vote, politicians dropped out of the race leaving only Paris and Los Angeles on the ballot, and setting up the tripartite agreement that led to the awarding of the 2024 and 2028 Games in a single International Olympic Committee (IOC) vote.
In 2021 the Hungarian Olympic Committee formed the Budapest 2032 Committee to bid for the Games, but that project ended quickly after Brisbane was unexpectedly chosen to host the Games instead.
Instead of shutting down, the committee was renamed to the Budapest Olympic Games Commission to target the 2036 Games.
The IOC does not disclose nations that are currently involved in a continuous dialogue to host the Games but some jurisdictions have already discussed intentions for 2036 publicly. These include Istanbul in Türkiye, India, Egypt, Cape Town in South Africa, Santiago in Chile and Seoul in South Korea. Qatar and Saudi Arabia are known to be interested as well but no formal announcements have been made.
Germany, Poland and United Kingdom have shown interest in bidding for the 2040 edition.
There is no set deadline for the awarding of the Games, but one or more qualified candidates could be selected as early as next year.
