Dakar Opens the Youth Olympic Games, the First Olympic Event Held in Africa

The Youth Olympic Games open in Senegal on Saturday, bringing an Olympic sporting event to Africa for the first time in the 130 year history of the modern Games. The opening ceremony takes place this evening at Abdoulaye Wade Stadium in Diamniadio, outside Dakar, where President Bassirou Diomaye Faye is due to declare the Games open at 6:30 p.m. local time. International Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry and several heads of state are expected to attend.

Almost 2,700 athletes aged 14 to 17, from 204 national Olympic committees, will compete over 14 days in 25 sports and 153 medal events. Competition is spread across three zones: Dakar, Diamniadio and the coastal town of Saly, about 80 kilometres from the capital. The Games close on November 13.

A long wait for an African first

Senegal was awarded the Games in 2018 and was first due to host them in 2022. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed the event back four years, and Dakar 2026 is now the fourth edition of the Summer Youth Olympic Games. No Olympic event of any kind had previously been staged on African soil.

Coventry, a former Olympic swimming champion from Zimbabwe, became the first African president of the IOC when she was elected in 2025. After inspecting the venues and the athletes village in Dakar on Thursday, October 29, she told a press conference that the first Olympic sporting event in Africa had been a long time in the making, and that Dakar was ready to deliver despite the postponement, Reuters reported. Organisers said last minute energy and rain problems had been dealt with, and more than 6,000 volunteers are helping to run the Games.

New sports and new firsts

Four sports appear at a Youth Olympic Games for the first time: Baseball5, wushu, coastal rowing beach sprints and beach wrestling, a discipline with roots in Senegal's own wrestling tradition. A Refugee Olympic Team takes part in a Youth Olympic Games for the first time, with six athletes based in Kenya and Uganda competing in athletics, judo and taekwondo. Dakar 2026 is also the first Youth Olympic Games to reach full gender equality, with equal quota places for boys and girls across every sport.

Senegal fields a home team of 136 athletes. Security around the venues is considerable, and includes Spanish and French police officers who worked at the Paris 2024 Olympics, organisers said. France 24 reported that Russia is fielding 13 athletes under its own flag at an Olympic event for the first time since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 led to restrictions on its teams.

For Senegal, the two weeks are a chance to put Dakar at the centre of world sport. Competition runs every day until the closing ceremony on November 13, and the medals decided in Dakar, Diamniadio and Saly will be the first Olympic medals ever awarded on African soil.