2022 Winter Olympics

The 2022 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XXIV Olympic Winter Games (Chinese: 第二十四届冬季奥林匹克运动会; pinyin: Dì Èrshísì Jiè Dōngjì Àolínpǐkè Yùndònghuì), and commonly known as Beijing 2022, is a multi-sport event that will take place in Beijing, China from 4 to 20 February 2022. It will be the third consecutive Olympic Games held in Asia, after Pyeongchang 2018 and Tokyo 2020. Having hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics, Beijing will be the first city ever to host both the Summer and Winter Olympics. It will also be the largest city to host the Winter Olympics, a distinction that was previously held by Vancouver, which hosted the 2010 Winter Olympics.

It will be the first Olympic Winter Games ever to be held in China and the first since 1984 to be held in a Communist state. The estimated budget of the games is $3.9 billion, less than one tenth of the $43 billion spent on the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Bidding

The bidding calendar was announced by the IOC in October 2012, with the application deadline set for 14 November 2013. The IOC Executive Board reviewed the bids from all applicant cities on 7 July 2014, and selected Oslo (Norway), Almaty (Kazakhstan) and Beijing (China) as the final candidate cities. Oslo withdrew its bid on 1 October 2014, leaving Almaty and Beijing as the 2 remaining candidates. Beijing was selected as host city of the 2022 Winter Olympics after beating Almaty by 4 votes, on 31 July 2015, at the 128th IOC Session in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Winter Olympic Games

The Winter Olympic Games (French: Jeux olympiques d'hiver) is a major international sporting event that occurs once every four years. Unlike the Summer Olympics, the Winter Olympics feature sports practiced on snow and ice. The first Winter Olympics, the 1924 Winter Olympics, was held in Chamonix, France. The original five sports (broken into nine disciplines) were bobsleigh, curling, ice hockey, Nordic skiing (consisting of the disciplines military patrol,cross-country skiing, Nordic combined, and ski jumping), and skating (consisting of the disciplines figure skating and speed skating). The Games were held every four years from 1924 until 1936, after which they were interrupted by World War II. The Olympics resumed in 1948 and was again held every four years. Until 1992, the Winter and Summer Olympic Games were held in the same years, but in accordance with a 1986 decision by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to place the Summer and Winter Games on separate four-year cycles in alternating even-numbered years, the next Winter Olympics after 1992 was in 1994.