Everything you need to know about the 2024 Paralympic Games

The 2024 Paralympic Games will kick off on August 28th with the opening ceremony on the Place de la Concorde. Held for the first time in France, the Paralympic Games will bring 4,400 athletes and thousands of sports fans together until September 8th.

These 549 events will take place on some exceptional and iconic sites, such as the Invalides for para-archery, the Eiffel Tower for blind soccer, the Champ-de-Mars for para-judo and wheelchair rugby, and the Château de Versailles park for para-equestrian events. Para-badminton and para-weightlifting will also be hosted at the Arena Porte de la Chapelle.

After the closing of the Games, the Olympic flame will return tp Paris for the Paralympic Games in August 2024. It will be lit in Stoke Mandeville, Great Britain, the historical cradle of Paralympic history. This is where the first Stoke Mandeville International Games, the forerunner of today's Games, were held in 1952. The flame will then cross the English Channel to Paris for the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games!

The Paris 2024 Paralympic Games will feature 22 sports and 23 disciplines (para-cycling includes two: track para-cycling and road para-cycling). 549 events will take place from August 29th to September 8th, 2024.

Among the 23 disciplines scheduled for the Paralympic Games, two are unique to disabled sport: boccia and goalball. Find out more about these two remarkable disciplines!

The name "boccia" comes from the Italian word for "ball". Often compared to pétanque, boccia is played indoors and requires precision and dexterity. Each player must throw or roll six balls as close as possible to a white ball, or Jack, much the same way as in pétanque. Matches are played in four or six rounds, individually, in doubles or in teams of three.

This discipline is usually played athletes with severely impaired motor and/or cerebral functions. Players in the BC3 category, who are impaired in all four extremities, can use a launch pad, a helmet pointer and a sports assistant, who must keep his or her back to play.

The boccia events will take place in individual and mixed teams at the Arena Paris Sud 1, from August 29th to September 5th.

Goalball is a team sport invented for visually impaired, partially sighted and blind people. Goalball is not subjected to classification and all competing athletes must wear eye masks to make the game fair.

Two teams of three players (plus three substitutes) compete on a pitch 18 meters long and 9 meters wide. The attacking team must bounce a large, firm ball powerfully towards their opponents, who must prevent the ball from crossing the goal line by diving to the ground to stop it. The ball is filled with bells and emits sounds that enable the players to follow and anticipate their moves. To enable players to concentrate, this discipline requires total silence from spectators. Tactile markings are also present on the ground to help players find their way around the defensive zone.

The games, which require sustained physical effort, are played over two twelve-minute halves. Victory is awarded to the team with the highest score at the end of the allotted time, or to the team that manages to score ten goals more than its opponent, regardless of game time.

The men's and women's goalball tournaments will take place in the Arena Paris Sud 6, from August 29th to September 5, 2024th.

The City Paris supports 50 athletes and parathletes in their preparation for the Games. Among them, Solenne Piret (paraclimbing), José Letartre (para-equestrian) and Riadh Tarsim (para-cycling) talk about their Paralympic training. Discover their day-to-day in this series that follows Parisian athletes going for gold in 2024!

With some 350,000 visitors with disabilities expected in Paris for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the city is stepping up its disabled access, particularly at Olympic venues. It is working on this with disability experts.