Youth Olympic Games postponed to 2026

Young judoka will be disappointed as Senegal and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have mutually agreed to postpone the Youth Olympic Games (YOG) Dakar 2022 to 2026. The Youth Olympic Games were first held in 2010 in Singapore and many young athletes gained experience at Olympic level with all circumstances. In 2014 the Games were held in Nanjing and in 2018 in Buenos Aires.

IOC President Thomas Bach and President Macky Sall's announced the decision which meets the requirement of responsibility and the concern for efficiency imposed by current circumstances.

The postponement of Dakar 2022 allows the IOC, the National Olympic Committees (NOCs) and the International Federations (IFs) to better plan their activities, which have been strongly affected by the postponement of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, by the subsequent postponements of major international sports events, and by the operational and financial consequences of the global health crisis.

At the same time, it allows Senegal to carry on the excellent preparations for the Youth Olympic Games, the first Olympic event ever to be organised in Africa.

The IOC and Senegal understand that this news will be disappointing for many young athletes. Both parties can only appeal to their understanding. This agreement results from the large scale of the operational challenges which the IOC, the NOCs and the IFs are facing following the postponement of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020. With this in mind, the IOC will continue to offer all IFs and NOC Continental Associations the full content of the educational programmes of the Youth Olympic Games. This will allow for the objectives of this very important and much-appreciated component of the YOG to be maintained through the many events organised between now and 2026, in particular during the Continental Youth Games.

Some of the winner of the Youth Olympic Games are now current senior heroes such as Hifumi Abe, Miku Tashiru, Mikhail Igolnikov. His countryman Khasan Khalmurzaev took silver in 2010 at the Youth Olympic and became Olympic Champion in 2016. Other famous medalwinners at YOG were judoka like Krisztian Toth, Frank de Wit, Barbara Matic, Elvismar Rodriguez, Ivan Felipe Silva Morales, Jorre Verstraeten, Aleksandra Samardzic and many more.