IOC sets target to elect 2036 Olympics host in 2029 under new bid process

[GBModerator]

Regions hoping to host in 2036 need to discuss plans with the IOC before March 2027 when the Executive Board creates a short list for Strategic Dialogue, followed by a further narrowing of preferred candidates in late 2028

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[AustralianFan]

On 6/25/2026 at 12:20 AM, GBModerator said:

Regions hoping to host in 2036 need to discuss plans with the IOC before March 2027 when the Executive Board creates a short list for Strategic Dialogue, followed by a further narrowing of preferred candidates in late 2028

The post IOC sets target to elect 2036 Olympics host in 2029 under new bid process appeared first on GamesBids.com.

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An excellent reform.   Revealing details of those candidates who have reached the new Strategic Dialogue stage is a welcome addition to the Olympic Games Host Selection process so we’re not relying on interested parties to voluntarily reveal themselves and guessing who the rest are, as is currently the case for interested parties in the retained Continuous Dialogue stage.

The new transitional Strategic Dialogue stage will allow the IOC Executive Board to shortlist, for more in-depth evaluation, a number of Interested Parties with developed projects that align with the IOC’s strategic direction. There will also be increased collaboration between the IOC and shortlisted potential hosts at an earlier stage, with greater involvement from the IOC Members. The reforms had already been approved by the IOC Executive Board at its meeting in early June and are part of the Fit for the Future process, which IOC President Kirsty Coventry initiated when she took office in June 2025. The review of the host selection process was spearheaded by the Future Host Commission following feedback from IOC Members and Olympic stakeholders, including Interested Parties. They asked for clear timelines and evaluation criteria, and a more gradual progression through the dialogue stages. Increasing the involvement of the IOC membership was also a key part of the feedback received during the process. These reforms mean that the next selection process, for the 2036 Olympic Games, will now have the following timeline: March 2027 The IOC EB will shortlist Interested Parties from the Continuous Dialogue pool to enter Strategic Dialogue. During this new transitional stage, they will be expected to provide an initial response to the Future Host Questionnaire and core financial guarantees. The IOC will offer enhanced technical support and will work with the Interested Parties to optimise their projects. The Future Host Commission will make site visits to the proposed hosts. Late 2028 The IOC EB will open a Targeted Dialogue with Preferred Hosts, based on a Future Host Commission report with a thorough analysis of the bid files and findings from the Commission’s visits. During the Targeted Dialogue, the Preferred Hosts will have an opportunity to update their submissions to address feedback provided by the Future Host Commission during the Strategic Dialogue. They will also have to submit a full set of guarantees, to give maximum legal and financial security. At the end of the Targeted Dialogue, the IOC Members will receive a full report from the Future Host Commission. Mid-2029 The IOC EB will select Preferred Hosts to be put forward for election by the IOC Session to become the host of the 2036 Olympic Games. Throughout the process, there will be regular touchpoints between the IOC membership, the Future Host Commission and the Interested Parties or Preferred Hosts. These will include presentations at IOC Sessions, and briefings at other times. “These reforms will give potential hosts greater clarity, and their governments will have a clear timetable to provide the requested support,” said Grabar-Kitarovic. Credit: IOC.com

[Sir Rols]

I’m liking Duncan Mackay’s take on it…

Coventry’s rewind consigns Bach’s Olympic bid reforms to the history books

Full test in spoiler below

 

Spoiler

A change in IOC leadership has seen the process to choose a host city for the Games revert closer to its previous model after the new system left too much power in the hands of one individual

It must be hard, having spent over half of your life dreaming of getting to the top position, then more than another 10 years carefully implementing all the ideas you have formulated in that period, only to see many of them swept away in 12 months by your successor, who you had hand-picked because you believed they would protect your legacy.

But that is what has happened to Thomas Bach, who last week had to sit on the top table for two days at the International Olympic Committee Extraordinary Session in Lausanne and was forced to watch as new President Kirsty Coventry continued to roll back many of the reforms that the German was so proud of introducing during his 12-year presidency.

Coventry told the Zeus Files that Bach, appointed as the IOC’s Honorary President following her election last year, was “very supportive” of her proposed reforms, but during the Session his body language told a very different story as he observed much of what was happening with his arms tightly crossed and, in the words of one IOC member, like he was “sucking on a lemon”.

The decision to overhaul the selection framework to choose host cities for the Olympics and revert to a process similar to the one in place before Bach was elected IOC President in 2013, will have particularly upset him.

Bach’s election in Buenos Aires had come a few days after Tokyo had been elected to host the 2020 Olympics and two years after Pyeongchang had won the right to stage the 2018 Winter Olympics in a campaign that saw Munich, the bid that he had led, comprehensively beaten.

Munich’s defeat, in particular, had left him bitter and shaped many of the views he later implemented as he rewrote the rule book in his own autocratic way.

Bach’s main criticisms included claiming that the procedure treated bid cities “like a tender for a business or franchise”, resulting in repetitive presentations and “too many losers”.

Bach also claimed that the model forced cities to rely heavily on expensive international consultants, complaining that too often bid books sounded exactly the same no matter the region. He vowed to “change this mentality.”

The overhaul of the bid process was central to Bach’s much-vaunted Olympic Agenda 2020, his strategic roadmap to reform the future of the IOC, officially introduced a year after his election.

Under the plan, rather than running a worldwide public campaign to promote their bids, cities that expressed an interest in hosting the Olympics were invited to an “invitation phase”.

Many of the sentiments of Bach’s new system were noble - such as prioritising sustainability, feasibility, and local development, allowing cities to adapt the Games to their existing infrastructure rather than the other way around - but very quickly it became clear that transparency was being sacrificed in the name of reform.

As Bach sat in the SwissTech Convention Center listening to Coventry outlining the new process, he could have been forgiven for allowing his mind to wander back to the same venue almost exactly nine years earlier when, at the 130th IOC Session, he pulled off a noteworthy coup by engineering the joint award of the 2024 and 2028 Olympics to Paris and Los Angeles, respectively.

A series of withdrawals from the campaign for the 2024 Olympics, including Hamburg, Rome and Budapest, had left Paris and LA as the only cities left still in the race and Bach seized upon the opportunity to initiate talks between the two and broker a deal for a joint award for those Games and 2028.

Bach was in his element those two days, especially with the arrival of newly elected French President, Emmanuel Macron, who travelled with his wife, Brigitte, to personally deliver the formal Candidate City document to IOC members.

At the end of the Session, Bach invited the mayors of LA and Paris, Eric Garcetti and Anne Hidalgo, onto the stage where they signalled their desire to reach an agreement on sharing the award of the Games as the IOC President lifted their hands into the air and hailed a “golden opportunity”.

It precisely fitted the new model that Bach wanted to promote; two world-famous cities with strong plans to stage events that mirrored Olympic Agenda 2020. There were no losers, only winners.

Paris 2024 staged an exceptional Olympics - maybe the best in history - while LA28 is expected to put on another spectacular show befitting a city that is home to Hollywood.

Perhaps that is because both cities were forced to undergo full bid campaigns, where their plans and proposals were fully evaluated and challenged by the IOC, with the decision to hand them the Games without having to face a proper contested vote only coming at the end of that process.

Subsequent decisions by Bach to award the 2032 Olympics to Brisbane and 2030 Winter Olympics to the French Alps were taken without either bid having to present proper plans that were closely scrutinised.

The result has been chaotic preparations characterised by poor planning by both hosts, negative headlines and extra burden placed on the IOC staff.

Brisbane being awarded the Olympics was such a secret that the majority of IOC members had no idea it was even being considered until I exclusively broke the story on insidethegames in February 2021.

Those shocked at the opacity included Bach’s fellow Germans after it killed their country’s hopes of bidding for the 2032 Olympics.

“The new selection system, praised by IOC president Thomas Bach as ‘more cost-effective and apolitical, and also preventing any unacceptable influence’ can hardly be surpassed in terms of non-transparency,” said Dagmar Freitag, chair of the parliamentary sports commission of Germany’s lower house, the Bundestag.

Athletes Germany spokesperson Max Hartung struck a similar note, when he said, “If the process is incomprehensible, then distrust and suspicion of arbitrary decisions arise.”

There is not one person in the Olympic Movement who does not believe that Brisbane being awarded the Games without having to go through the traditional bid process was a golden thank-you to key Bach ally John Coates, IOC vice-president and president of the Australian Olympic Committee at the time.

It is widely believed that Bach also tried to award the 2036 Olympics to India last year in his final few weeks before stepping down as president of the IOC until Coventry made it clear that she could not support such a move.

Casting a vote to elect the host city is one of the major privileges of being an IOC member, an honour largely stripped away from them under Bach, with him having turned the Session into little more than a rubber-stamping chamber.

Coventry had pledged during her election campaign for IOC President to restore that right, and the reforms she unveiled as part of her “Fit for the Future” initiative last week are the first part of keeping that promise.

A multi-step dialogue process to determine future Games hosts, starting with the 2036 Olympics, has been introduced. The new rules feature structured, phased dialogues, earlier financial commitments, and a return to electing hosts seven years in advance.

Following the continuous dialogue stage already in place to engage with interested bidders to explore hosting opportunities without commitment, a new strategic dialogue stage will be added to allow the IOC Executive Board to shortlist a number of bids they rule are serious candidates.

The IOC revealed that they have up to ten cities and regions interested in bidding for 2036, including from India, Qatar, Hungary, Turkey, Egypt and Germany. 

These proposals are now set to be evaluated by the IOC’s Future Host Commission via a series of questionnaire responses and site visits with the aim of drawing up a list to enter the strategic dialogue to be announced by the end of next March.

These are expected to be presented to the next IOC Session, due to take place at Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, at the end of April.

In late 2028, the IOC Executive Board is due to select preferred hosts for targeted dialogue following even closer scrutiny of bids, including financial guarantees, government support and overall plans, with at least two expected to be put forward for a final vote by the members at the Session the following year.

“All stakeholders wanted greater transparency with clearer timelines and evaluation criteria, and a more gradual progression through the dialogue stages,” IOC Future Host Commission chair Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović told the IOC Session last week during a presentation.

Grabar-Kitarović did retain a little bit of the old Bach thinking, though, when she added that the new proposals should recognise “transparency and legacy and continuity to recognise unsuccessful finalists as strong potential candidates for future Games”.

When the Zeus Files asked Croatia's former president how, in a process that would end with one city being chosen over another, with several having initially entered the competition, the IOC could avoid “too many losers”, Grabar-Kitarović admitted she did not know.

“If you have any ideas, please let me know,” she said.

Bach is fully on board with these changes, Coventry claimed.

“Honorary President Bach has been supportive,” she told the Zeus Files. “He left the Olympic Movement in an incredibly strong position to evolve, but it’s normal in any organisation’s evolution to take stock of where we are - to re-adjust, re-align and decide where the movement should be.

“We have made decisions during the last 12 years, and we have learnt from them, which is important, or we become irrelevant.

“We owe it to the athletes of the Olympic Movement to ask if we can do something better. We have to be agile enough to say we hear you. How do we fix it? How can we do it better?”

Duncan Mackay, the Zeus Files

 

[StefanMUC]

LOL, I‘m sorry but the Munich 2018 defeat didn‘t leave Bach „bitter“.

He knew his own ambitions would be at risk if Munich had succeeded - two big German wins in the IOC almost back to back seemed unlikely. So he was never fully into it, it was more of fulfilling some unpleasant duty that he attached himself to the bid.

[Sir Rols]

I was piqued by the little aside that Bach was all set to award 2036 to Ahmedabad as his parting “gift”, but Kirsty quickly put paid to that.

She certainly hasn’t been the Mini-Me Bach was grooming her to be. I’ve got to give her some kudos. I’d give her presidency a mixed rating so far. Tearing down the “New Norm” was essential and all credit to her. But she seems to be in a rush to appease Russia though, and her whole anti-trans decrees are a bit ham-fisted (though I guess it was about the only platform she publicly campaigned on).

[cfm Jeremie]

4 hours ago, StefanMUC said:

LOL, I‘m sorry but the Munich 2018 defeat didn‘t leave Bach „bitter“.

He knew his own ambitions would be at risk if Munich had succeeded - two big German wins in the IOC almost back to back seemed unlikely. So he was never fully into it, it was more of fulfilling some unpleasant duty that he attached himself to the bid.

Don’t forget that if history has shown us one thing is that Bach is not a gracious loser (Oslo 2022 anyone?). If you look at Bach’s immediate reaction after the 2018 election, it is obvious he is very  unhappy: I don’t know whether he was (unpleasantly) surprised by the margin of PyeongChang victory or whether he had such a high esteem of himself that he thought he could pull it off (I.e. the Munich and IOC presidency combo).

Edited June 30 by cfm Jeremie

[world atlas]

Well, that's a great development.

it seems like Kirsty didn't want to to make an immediate radical changes like what both Samaranch and Coe planned to do if they had won the presidency.

from what we have know from their manifesto last year they wanted to bring the whole old bidding process as it was before Bach's changes.

first what we understand the IOC members agree that the best time to choose a future host is around seven years before the games.

but they still have Bach's legacy as Brisbane 2032 was selected too early back in 2021 and also Utah 2034.

now it seems like Coventry is taking a slow approach to bring back the actual  and old norm by focusing on and adjusting the current 2036 bidding process until things stabilize gradually to something very similar if not the exact same old process.

the other way I assume is to pause and cancel the whole Bach's era reforms Agenda 2020+ and the new norm to start a new approach from scratch.

I really don't know what is Kirsty's opinion regarding Switzerland 2038 as it seems that the whole privileged dialogue was imposed on her as a Bach's legacy commitment that she has to keep and respect.

from what I remember she was asked about it  sometime back in the past year but she referred to Christophe Dubi to answer any questions about Switzerland 2038 and the privilege dialogue.

and I didn't find any interviews or press conferences where she has addressed the 2038 situation.

anyway since they plan to confirm Switzerland as host next year at the Punta Cana session to fulfill Bach's commitment I hope they take a break after that to assess the future of the Winter Olympics and the climate change impact on it before starting the 2042 bidding process in 2033 then selecting a hosts at the 2035 session as I think this is the best for the IOC and all parties involved.
 

[Brekkie Boy]

This is it how it should have remained - the 2032 "process" was an absolute scandal.   The only thing I would amend is perhaps considering double awards ala Paris/LA, so inviting bids for both 2036 and 2040.