Hamburg, Rome and Budapest pulled out of the 2024 race. This time the field is full, and each bidder can build its case on what it has already hosted.
The IOC confirmed on 6 October that Qatar, India, South Africa, Germany, Hungary, Türkiye and South Korea have registered interest in hosting the 2036 Olympics. Others can join until 31 October. A shortlist follows in March 2027, preferred hosts in 2028, a decision in mid-2029.
Ten years ago the IOC could not fill a field. Paris and Los Angeles were awarded 2024 and 2028 together in 2017 so that neither would be lost, and Brisbane was the only preferred candidate for 2032. Now there are seven, from four continents, and five of them have never hosted a Summer Games.
The IOC’s process no longer asks for a bid book or a decade of guarantees. And Paris showed what a host can do with the date: the Seine clean-up, the Métro extensions and the athletes’ village in Saint-Denis were planned before the bid and delivered on its timetable.
Why bid?
The seventeen days of competition are the smallest part of what a host gets. The rest is a fixed date for transport and housing the city already wanted. It is also a decade of test events and world championships before the opening ceremony, air routes that open for the Games and stay for the traffic, and a change in how investors and visitors see the country. Singapore’s Grand Prix, which we measured for the Ministry of Trade and Industry, shifted the perception of the city among 70–90% of business owners surveyed in its target markets.
The costs are known, and each is a choice the city makes in the bid rather than after it: venues with no calendar after the closing ceremony, security, the regular visitors who stay away for a month, the retail trade lost around the sites. A stadium booked for 200 nights a year after the Games is an asset, and one booked for twelve is a cost the city carries for thirty years. A village sold to a housing provider before construction becomes homes, and one without a buyer becomes a building with no plan.
What makes a bid defensible?
Doha hosted the 2022 World Cup. Germany hosted Euro 2024, Budapest the 2023 World Athletics Championships, PyeongChang the 2018 Winter Games, South Africa the 2010 World Cup, India the 2023 Cricket World Cup, Istanbul the 2010 basketball World Championship. The observed figures from those events, tourism receipts with the visitors who would have come anyway taken out, jobs split between construction and operation, GVA stated as a range with the displacement assumption beside it, are the base for a 2036 forecast. A bid built on them can answer its own public before the IOC asks, and can tell its finance ministry what to spend on as well as how much.
Registration closes on 31 October. The shortlist is due in March 2027.
Living Lab has deployed at more than 700 events in the last 12 months, across 49 countries. An event economic impact assessment of what each of the seven has already hosted is where we would start.