More details about the opening ceremony: the start time has been announced

There is a new certainty about the opening ceremony of Paris 2024: it will begin at 19.30 (local time), according to the organization’s confirmation after the seventh and last Coordination Committee with the International Olympic Committee.

Tony Estanguet, president of the Organizing Committee, pointed to the use of natural lighting typical of the sunset as a determining factor: “We chose that moment to make the most of the light,” he explained. The sunset for Friday, July 26 is expected at 21:35.

The opening party on Friday, July 26, will be the first in summer Olympic life to take place outside a stadium, in a proposal adapted to the slogan of this edition, “Open Games in pairs”. Around 326,000 spectators - a figure reduced by almost half of the original figure and of which 222,000 will be French citizens who will attend free of charge - will witness the parade along the Seine River, in which 94 boats will carry more than 10,000 athletes during the six kilometers between the Austerlitz Bridge and Trocadero.

Once the starting time has been made official, it is a possibility that the Greek delegation will proceed with the route of the boats at 20.24, knowing the symbolic value given by the organization to this number game.

With regard to security, a threat that forces the authorities to reserve details of this event involving 45,000 officers, it was confirmed that a fleet will be monitoring the river route, while on land public and private forces will be combined, and airspace will remain closed within a radius of 150 kilometers from Paris between 19.00 and midnight.