With under 850 days to go until the start of the next Summer Olympic Games, Paris 2024 organizers have unveiled the high-level competition schedule by sport.
After having been approved by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Executive Board, the schedule consists of 32 sports comprised of 329 events spanning a total of 19 days.
The world’s biggest sporting competition kicks off with handball events scheduled to begin on Wednesday, July 24th, two days prior to the date of the Opening Ceremony.
Pool swimming will see a traditional format of morning prelims and evening finals after the opposite timing took place at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo last year.
Taking place at the Paris La Defense Arena venue, pool swimming prelims are slated to begin at 11:00 am local (5:00 am EDT) with finals beginning at 8:30 pm local (2:30 pm EDT). This is a more traditional timing than we’ve seen in the last two games, where swimming finals were in the morning in Tokyo and started very late in Rio (mostly to appease the American television audience of NBC).
Saturday, July 27th represents the first day of competition with the last finals session taking place at 6:30 pm local (12:30 pm EDT) on Sunday, August 4th.
Marathon (open water) swimming at Pont Alexandre III venue is slated for Thursday, August 8th and Friday, August 9th beginning at 7:30 am local (1:30 am EDT) on each day.
The pair of disciplines closely follow what transpired in Tokyo in terms of dates where pool swimming started on Saturday, July 24th – Sunday, August 1st and open water swimming spanned Wednesday, August 4th – Thursday, August 5th last year.
13.4 million tickets are expected to be available for Paris 2024 – 10 million for the Olympics and 3.4 million for the Paralympics.
Day 1 Schedule – Swimming at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics (By Time Zone)
Note: Day 8, on Sunday, August 4, has only a finals session and starts 2 hours earlier than the rest of the meet.
| CITY | ZONE | PRELIMS | SEMIS & FINALS |
| PARIS | GMT+2 | 11:00 AM on Saturday, July 27 | 8:30 PM on Saturday, July 27 |
| Honolulu, Papeete | GMT-10 | 11:00 PM on Friday, July 26 | 8:30 AM on Saturday, July 24 |
| Los Angeles, Seattle, Vancouver | GMT-7 | 2:00 AM on Saturday, July 27 | 11:30 AM on Saturday, July 24 |
| Calgary, Denver, Edmonton, San Salvador | GMT-6 | 3:00 AM on Saturday, July 27 | 12:30 PM on Saturday, July 27 |
| Bogota, Chicago, Dallas, Kingston, Lima, Mexico City | GMT-5 | 4:00 AM on Saturday, July 27 | 1:30 PM on Saturday, July 27 |
| Atlanta, Asuncion, Caracas, La Paz, New York, Toronto | GMT-4 | 5:00 AM on Saturday, July 27 | 2:30 PM on Saturday, July 27 |
| Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo | GMT-3 | 6:00 AM on Saturday, July 27 | 3:30 PM on Saturday, July 27 |
| Abidjan, Dakar, Reykjavik, Timbuktu | GMT+0 | 9:00 AM on Saturday, July 27 | 6:30 PM on Saturday, July 27 |
| Algiers, Dublin, Edinburgh, Kinshasa, Lagos, Lisbon, London, Tunis | GMT+1 | 10:00 AM on Saturday, July 27 | 7:30 PM on Saturday, July 27 |
| Berlin, Brussels, Budapest, Cairo, Copenhagen, Johannesburg, Kigali, Oslo, Paris, Sarajevo, Warsaw, Zagreb, Zurich | GMT+2 | 11:00 AM on Saturday, July 27 | 8:30 PM on Saturday, July 27 |
| Addis Ababa, Athens, Bagdad, Bucharest, Damascus, Dar es Salaam, Helsinki, Istanbul, Kyiv, Mogadishu, Moscow, Riga, Riyadh, | GMT+3 | 12:00 Noon on Saturday, July 27 | 9:30 PM on Saturday, July 27 |
| Baku, Dubai, Samara, Tbilisi | GMT+4 | 1:00 PM on Saturday, July 27 | 10:30 PM on Saturday, July 27 |
| Bangkok, Jakarta, Phnom Penh, Vientiane | GMT+7 | 4:00 PM on Saturday, July 27 | 1:30 AM on Sunday, July 28 |
| Beijing, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Taipei | GMT+8 | 5:00 PM on Saturday, July 27 | 2:30 AM on Sunday, July 28 |
| Tokyo, Seoul, Palau, Pyongyang | GMT+9 | 6:00 PM on Saturday, July 27 | 3:30 AM on Sunday, July 28 |
| Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, Vladivostok | GMT+10 | 7:00 PM on Saturday, July 27 | 4:30 AM on Sunday, July 28 |
| Auckland, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Wellington | GMT+12 | 9:00 PM on Saturday, July 27 | 6:30 AM on Sunday, July 28 |
Looks like there are 9 days of finals – so that the 50 metre freestyle does not clash with the mixed medley of the free relays? Is that correct?
Or the free relays I meant
Does this mean that the prelims, semis, and finals are all on the same day for each event ??? Please answer.
no… that’s still 36 hours between 3 sessions.
Day 1 – morning prelims with semis in the evening
Day 2 – finals in the evening
Be there or be square. Hup Holland!
I would like to see the 200 IM and 200 Backstroke not overlap as well as the men’s 400 free and 400 IM on different days.
I know there’s not a perfect solution.
Agree!!
Totally agree. 200 IM and 200 back is a pretty common combo which would be good to get rid of.