When do the 2022 Winter Olympics start? Where are they being held?
The 24th edition of the Winter Olympic Games takes place in February 2022. It will be the first time that the Games have been held in China.
The Winter Olympic Games will be staged in the Far East for the second time running, following on from the 2018 event which took place in Pyeongchang, Korea Republic. This time, the Winter Games will be held in China for the first time. Beijing was elected as the host city on 31 July 2015, polling 44 votes, beating the other candidate city, Almaty, Kazakhstan by just four votes.
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More events than ever before
A record total of 109 events spread over 15 disciplines and seven sports will take place in Beijing and at venues in neighbouring towns – seven more than in the previous Games. The additional events are big air freestyle (men's and women's), women's bobsled, mixed team freestyle skiing aerials, ski jumping, and snowboard cross and a mixed relay in short track speed skating.
The Opening Ceremony at 2022 Beijing will be held at the 80,000-capacity National Stadium (informally known as the Bird’s Nest) on Friday 4 February starting at 8pm local time CST – in the US that’s 7am ET in New York or 4am PT in Los Angeles. For those watching in Europe, the opening ceremony will begin at 13:00 hours CET or 12 noon in the UK.
2022 Beijing will already be underway before that however. The first events start on Wednesday 2 February with the Curling Mixed Doubles. Women’s Freestyle skiing and Ice Hockey follows on Thursday 3rd with the Women’s Ice Hockey preliminaries scheduled for the morning of Friday 4th, when the Games get officially underway.
Beijing Winter Olympics Closing Ceremony
The 2022 Winter Games will come to a close on Sunday 20 February with five events concluding the action – Bobsleigh, Women’s 30km Cross-country skiing, Women’s Curling gold medal game, Figure skating exhibition gala and the Men’s Ice hockey final.
Then it will be all back to National stadium for the Closing Ceremony which gets underway as before at 8pm China Standard Time (7am ET / 4am PT, 13:00 hours CET and 12 noon in the UK.