The 2024 Summer Olympic Games have begun in Paris, where hundreds of thousands of spectators are expected to gather in person as millions more tune in from home as the Opening Ceremony gets underway. This year’s events invite many of the world’s top athletes to compete in a range of different sporting events that will continue through next Sunday, Aug. 11 — swimming, gymnastics, volleyball, wrestling, tennis, basketball and judo are just a few of the categories.
Contenders have come to the Paris Olympics from almost every corner of the globe — with a couple of exceptions.
Which countries are participating in the 2024 Paris Olympics?
Athletes who compete in any Olympic Games technically represent the National Olympic Committees attached to the countries or territories where they’re from, according to the International Olympic Committee. The organization manages the Games as part of its oversight of the wider Olympic brand and recognizes 206 national committees worldwide in addition to the Refugee Olympic Team, considering each its own delegation.
The 2024 Paris Olympics will involve around 10,500 athletes representing 205 delegations, including the refugee team, according to the organizers. Another 4,000 or so athletes, from almost as many delegations, will compete in the Paralympics later this summer.
All delegations with at least one representative in the Olympics will be introduced at the Opening Ceremony on the Seine, including those that are only sending a single athlete or a handful of athletes to compete. Around 120 heads of state, sovereigns and heads of government will be there, too, the organizers said.
The delegations set to participate in the 2024 Olympics are:
- Afghanistan
- Albania
- Algeria
- American Samoa
- Andorra
- Angola
- Antigua and Barbuda
- Argentina
- Armenia
- Aruba
- Australia
- Austria
- Azerbaijan
- Bahamas
- Bahrain
- Bangladesh
- Barbados
- Belgium
- Belize
- Benin
- Bermuda
- Bhutan
- Bolivia
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Botswana
- Brazil
- British Virgin Islands
- Bulgaria
- Burkina Faso
- Burundi
- Brunei
- Cambodia
- Cameroon
- Canada
- Cape Verde
- Cayman Islands
- Central African Republic
- Chad
- Chile
- China
- Colombia
- Comoros
- Cook Islands
- Costa Rica
- Croatia
- Cuba
- Cyprus
- Czech Republic
- Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Denmark
- Djibouti
- Dominica
- Dominican Republic
- Ecuador
- Egypt
- El Salvador
- Eritrea
- Estonia
- Eswatini
- Ethiopia
- Equatorial Guinea
- Federated States of Micronesia
- Fiji
- Finland
- France
- Gabon
- Gambia
- Georgia
- Germany
- Ghana
- Great Britain
- Greece
- Grenada
- Guam
- Guatemala
- Guinea
- Guinea-Bissau
- Guyana
- Haiti
- Hong Kong
- Honduras
- Hungary
- Iceland
- India
- Indonesia
- Iran
- Iraq
- Ireland
- Israel
- Italy
- Ivory Coast
- Jamaica
- Japan
- Jordan
- Kazakhstan
- Kenya
- Kiribati
- Kosovo
- Kuwait
- Kyrgyzstan
- Laos
- Latvia
- Lebanon
- Lesotho
- Liberia
- Libya
- Liechtenstein
- Lithuania
- Luxembourg
- Madagascar
- Malawi
- Malaysia
- Maldives
- Mali
- Malta
- Marshall Islands
- Mauritius
- Mauritania
- Mexico
- Moldova
- Monaco
- Mongolia
- Montenegro
- Morocco
- Mozambique
- Myanmar
- Nauru
- Namibia
- Nepal
- Netherlands
- New Zealand
- Nicaragua
- Niger
- Nigeria
- North Korea
- North Macedonia
- Norway
- Oman
- Pakistan
- Palau
- Palestine
- Panama
- Papua New Guinea
- Paraguay
- Peru
- Philippines
- Poland
- Portugal
- Puerto Rico
- Qatar
- Republic of the Congo
- Romania
- Rwanda
- Saint Kitts and Nevis
- Saint Lucia
- Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
- Samoa
- San Marino
- Sao Tome and Principe
- Saudi Arabia
- Senegal
- Serbia
- Seychelles
- Sierra Leone
- Singapore
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- Solomon Islands
- Somalia
- South Africa
- South Korea
- South Sudan
- Spain
- Sri Lanka
- Sudan
- Suriname
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Syria
- Chinese Taipei
- Tajikistan
- Tanzania
- Thailand
- Timor-Leste (East Timor)
- Togo
- Tonga
- Trinidad and Tobago
- Tunisia
- Turkey
- Turkmenistan
- Tuvalu
- Uganda
- Ukraine
- United Arab Emirates
- United States
- Uruguay
- Uzbekistan
- Vanuatu
- Venezuela
- Vietnam
- Virgin Islands
- Yemen
- Zambia
- Zimbabwe
Which countries aren’t participating in the 2024 Paris Olympics?
Russia and Belarus aren’t participating in the Olympic Games this year, after the International Olympic Committee voted to suspend both from the competition because of the ongoing war in Ukraine. The IOC brought an initial sanction against Russia when the country invaded Ukraine in February 2022, calling the timing a “blatant violation” of the centuries-old Olympic Truce that calls for a period of peace starting seven days before the Olympics and ending seven days after the Paralympics. The Russian invasion happened between the Olympics and Paralympics in Beijing that year.
The IOC also sanctioned Belarus over its support for Russia, and both countries have remained banned from participating in the Olympics as the war in Ukraine has drawn on.
The international committee’s executive board officially suspended athletes from Russia or Belarus from competing in Olympic Games last October, when the board determined that Russia had breached the Olympic charter by violating the “territorial integrity” of the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine.
Athletes with Russian or Belarusian passports are prohibited from competing in the Paris Olympics under the flags of their countries and won’t be introduced with everyone else at the Opening Ceremony, but some will still participate in the Games as Individual Neutral Athletes. Neutral athletes were deemed eligible by the IOC and invited to participate if they agreed to abide by the Olympics’ overall conduct rules and don’t engage in any display of support for, or association with, Russia or Belarus. The conduct agreement also stipulated that neutral athletes must “refrain from any activity or communication” indicating support for the war in Ukraine, prior to, during and after the Olympics.
How does country participation for 2024 compare to past Olympics?
Summer Olympic Games usually attract roughly the number of athletes expected to compete in 2024 — around 10,000 — from 200 or so territories assigned to National Olympic Committees, give or take a few delegations depending on the year. Winter Games are smaller, with the IOC reporting that some 2,900 athletes from around 80 national committees normally participate.
This is Russia’s fourth consecutive Olympics with a suspension from the games, although Russian athletes still participated in the games in Tokyo in 2021 and in Beijing in 2022. Because the international governing board had barred Russia from participating in the Olympics as a country — the consequence of a state-sponsored doping scandal meant to keep the Russian Federation out of the Games for two years — athletes instead competed under the Russian Olympic Committee name as a controversial workaround. The country’s current suspension from the Olympics explicitly applies to the ROC and Belarus, which is why athletes from either place are only eligible this time as neutrals.
Some past iterations of the Olympic Games had significantly lower turnout from countries that typically participate. Just over 25 years after the modern Olympics began in 1896 as the largest international sports competition to date, the games saw a marked drop in participation at the 1932 events in Los Angeles compared with earlier competitions, which the IOC attributes to the severity of the Great Depression and the relative remoteness of Southern California at that time. The 1932 athletics roster was half the size it had been in 1928 and the smallest since the Olympics in 1904, according to the committee.
But participation in the Olympic Games generally grew over the first half of the 20th century, gaining international renown that exploded once the 1964 Games were broadcast globally for the first time from Tokyo. Violence and political conflict were still reflected in the competitions at various points throughout that time, though. World War II caused the Olympics to be canceled in 1940 and 1944, and the aftermath meant Germany and Japan were banned when the Games resumed in London in 1948.
Later, in 1976, some African nations boycotted the Olympics in protest of the New Zealand national rugby team’s recent tour of South Africa during apartheid. Then, on the heels of the Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, dozens of nations, including the U.S., went on to boycott the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, driving participation numbers down to their lowest in decades. The Soviet Union, along with a handful of allies, retaliated in 1984 by boycotting the games in Los Angeles, but participation from other nations that year was so high that it set a new record.