The International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Kirsty Coventry on Thursday said “the excitement is building up” on arriving in Dakar, Senegal as the nation prepares to make history.
Senegal will host the first Olympic event on the African continent when the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games (YOG) flags off on Saturday 31 October at the Stade Abdoulaye Wade in Diamniadio.
Dakar 2026 will welcome around 2,700 athletes aged 14-17 to participate in the fourth edition of the Summer Youth Olympic Games, which gets underway from 31 October to 13 November.
The event will be staged across Dakar, Diamniadio and Saly over a two-week programme, with the Athletics competition kicking off from 8-10 November at the Complexe Iba Mar Diop stadium in Dakar.
The Youth Olympic Games in Dakar were originally scheduled for 2022 but were delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Speaking ahead of the opening ceremony at a press conference in Dakar on Thursday, IOC President Kirsty Coventry said, “It’s here. We are so happy. This has been a long time in the making.”
“The final touches are being put in place, and the venues are looking wonderful. We just came from the Games Village [YOV]. It felt like you were walking in the village in Paris or in Milan.”
Coventry’s appointment as president of the IOC in 2025 saw the two-time Olympic swimming champion from Zimbabwe become the first African to hold the position.
“I specifically feel very proud. I was part of the IOC [in 2018] when we took the decision to have the Youth Olympic Games here,” she said.
IOC’s chair of the coordination commission Humphrey Kayange spoke about the wider impact of the Youth Olympic Games beyond Dakar 2026.
“It’s not about just hosting the event and everything finishes. The ripple effect is one thing that we hope the Games will bring,” he said.
“Senegal has really put itself out there to host events often… There is a lot of potential and opportunity for [the Youth Olympic Games] to be a shining start,” he added.
For a continent that has never hosted a Summer Olympics, Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games offers a glimpse of what could one day be possible.
Kelly is a London-based sportswriter driven by a love for sport, with track and field at the heart of it. She began her journey as a sports reporter covering women's football, and has since gone on to cover major international competitions, including the Paris 2024 Olympic Games for Eurosport.
She breaks up her excessive screen time by running laps around the park or planning her next holiday!
