Youth Olympic Games

The Youth Olympic Games (YOG) is an elite sporting event for young people aged from 15 and 18 from around the world since 2010. However, it is an event different from other youth sports competitions, as it also includes educational activities with three areas of focus: protecting the athletes, working on performance, and assisting the athletes outside sport.

The sports programme is mainly based on that of the Olympic Games. In addition, it includes exciting new sports, such as breaking, sport climbing, 3-x-3 basketball, 3-x-3 ice hockey and mixed gender and mixed National Olympic Committee (NOC) events.

Apart from the sports events, the education programme promotes a variety of fun and interactive activities, workshops and team-building exercises to give the participating athletes the opportunity to learn about the Olympic values, explore other cultures and improve their training methods and performance.

The most recent Summer YOG were celebrated in Buenos Aires in 2018 and achieved gender equality for the first time. The latest Winter YOG took place in Lausanne in 2020 and featured 1,872 athletes. Non-athlete participants, namely reporters, ambassadors and athlete role models, are also an integral part of the YOG experience.

Adapted from: International Olympic Committee