The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has received candidature files from Los Angeles (USA), Rome (Italy), Budapest (Hungary) and Paris (France) for hosting the Olympic Games 2024 by the Wednesday deadline.

The IOC has hailed the plans, which were submitted in digital-only format for the first time, as showing the potential for unprecedented venue sustainability. 

“Following Olympic Agenda 2020, the Candidate Cities are making use of an extremely high percentage of existing and temporary venues, possibly the most ever,” said Jacqueline Barrett, Associate Director Olympic Games/Olympic Candidatures.

Olympic Agenda 2020 is the IOC’s strategic roadmap for the future of the Olympic Movement and the candidature process for the 2024 Games is the first to be launched following its adoption. 

The new process encourages cities to present Olympic projects that best match their sports, economic, social and environmental long-term planning needs. It calls for the use of existing facilities where possible, and provides flexibility for the venue concept to meet local sustainability and legacy needs and ambitions.

“Los Angeles, Rome, Budapest and Paris are all submitting projects fully in line with Olympic Agenda 2020,” said IOC President Thomas Bach.

 “It is impressive to see how they have incorporated the Olympic project into the long-term development plans of their city, region and country. Coming from different starting points, for all four there is a clear focus on sustainable development, legacy and in particular how the facilities are going to be used after the Olympic Games,” said Bach. 

“We are delighted to have four extremely strong candidatures and look forward to a fascinating competition.”

The submission of the Candidature Files on “Vision, Games Concept and Strategy” marks the end of the first part of the bidding process. 

“The plans received indicate very thoughtful consideration of what the Cities and their people need for the future,” said Barrett.

“The IOC has significantly simplified the Candidature Process, symbolised by the fact that the submissions arrived for the very first time on a USB key only, instead of thousands of pages of paper documents.”

An IOC-appointed working group will now study the files and report to the IOC Executive Board (EB) in June 2016. 

The next stage of the Candidature Process will focus on Governance, Legal and Venue Funding, to be submitted by 7 October 2016, followed by a final “Games Delivery, Experience and Venue Legacy” stage due on 3 February 2017.

During Stage 3, an IOC Evaluation Commission will make working visits to each City to study their projects in detail and issue a final report. 

The host city of the 2024 Olympic Games will be elected in September 2017 at the IOC Session in Lima, Peru.