The IOC has ticked another box on the roadmap for the 2026 Youth Olympic Games in Dakar, Senegal. Meeting this week in Lausanne, its Executive Board validated the event’s sports programme, namely the events and athlete quotas. In total, the 2026 YOG will feature 151 events – compared to 241 for the 2018 edition in Buenos Aires – split evenly between male and female athletes, with 72 events for each gender, plus seven mixed events. After Paris 2024, Dakar 2026 will therefore display perfect gender equality, both in terms of the number of athletes and the number of disciplines and events. The IOC has decided to maintain the official participation of 35 international federations. Twenty-five sports will be on the competition programme, with 10 others being included in a so-called “ mobilization ». In the first, where each sport will have a single discipline, athletics, aquatic sports (swimming), archery, badminton, baseball 5, basketball 3×3, boxing, breaking, cycling (road), equestrian sports (show jumping), fencing, football (futsal), gymnastics (artistic), handball (beach handball), judo, rowing (sea rowing), rugby (rugby sevens), sailing, skateboarding (street), table tennis, taekwondo, triathlon, volleyball (beach volleyball), wrestling (beach wrestling) and wushu will be grouped together. The mobilization program will highlight canoeing, golf, hockey, karate, modern pentathlon, shooting, sport climbing, surfing, tennis and weightlifting. These sports will not be included in the competition programme, but they will be able to offer interactive activities, both on-site and online. As for the total quota for the number of accredited persons, it has been set at 2.700.
