The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) have today confirmed the new dates for the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 will be celebrated from 23 July to 8 August 2021. They also agreed on new dates for the Paralympic Games, which will be celebrated from 24 August until 5 September 2021.

These new dates give the health authorities and all involved in the organisation of the Games the maximum time to deal with the constantly changing landscape and the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The new dates, exactly one year after those originally planned for 2020 (Olympic Games: 24 July to 9 August 2020 and Paralympic Games: 25 August to 6 September 2020), also have the added benefit that any disruption that the postponement will cause to the international sports calendar can be kept to a minimum, in the interests of the athletes and the IFs.

Additionally, they will provide sufficient time to finish the qualification process.

Mark England, Tokyo 2020 Chef de Mission added: “We welcome this quick decision from the IOC and the Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee. We appreciate the complexity of this issue and look forward to working with sports on their competition schedules as this becomes clearer. The summer dates make sense to us and support our prior planning.”

Mike Sharrock, Chief Executive of the BPA said: “We recognise the huge collective effort of the International Paralympic Committee, International Olympic Committee, Tokyo Organising Committee and the Japanese Government on agreeing the new dates so quickly.

We hope this will give Paralympic athletes the certainty they need to refocus on achieving their goals at the Tokyo Games next year.”