When and Where Are the Next Olympic Games? Tokyo 2020, Beijing 2022
The 2018 Winter Olympic Games came to an end over the weekend in Pyeongchang with a closing ceremony almost as spectacular as the opening one. The ceremony that included medal-clad athletes, the shirtless flag bearer from Tonga, and drones not only closed the 2018 Games but also left spectators gearing up for the next set of games to come.
The next time the Olympic torch is used to light a cauldron it will be to initiate the start of the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo. About a year and a half after that, the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing are set to begin.
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Viewers who have a new-found love of curling or ice dancing will have to wait four more years, until February 4, 2022, to see those events on Olympic ice. Representatives of Beijing, the city that hosted the Summer Olympics in 2008, performed at the closing ceremony Sunday to initiate the earliest welcome to the 2022 Winter Games. Additionally, the president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, made a traditional symbolic gesture and handed the Olympic flag to the host of the next Winter Games, the mayor of Beijing, Chen Jining.
To increase involvement in the next Winter Games, the organizing committee for Beijing began an initiative to get more than 300 million people in the country involved in winter sports, according to the IOC. There are 25 venues planned for the 2022 Games, 12 of which will be situated right in Beijing. Of those 12 venues, eight were previously used for the 2008 Summer Games, three are set to be newly constructed and a fourth is expected to be temporary.
The "water cube," otherwise known as the National Aquatics Center, is from the 2008 Summer Games and will host the curling events for the 2022 Games, while the National Stadium, known as the Bird's Nest, will be used for the opening and closing ceremonies again.
The organizing committee for the Tokyo Games, set to begin July 24, 2020, is also planning to reuse venues from the last time the city hosted the Summer Games in 1964. This move helps the city keep to the Olympic Agenda 2020 and limit the social and environmental consequences of hosting, while also decreasing building costs.
