Youth Olympic Games

The Youth Olympic Games (YOG) are an elite sporting event for young people across the world.  

YOG are distinct from other youth sports competitions since they include a series of educational activities. The activities have three areas of focus: protecting the athletes, working on performance, and assisting the athletes outside sport.

The sports programme is mainly based on that of the Olympic Games and includes new sports, disciplines and formats, such as breaking, sport climbing, 3-x-3 basketball, 3-x-3 ice hockey and mixed gender and mixed National Olympic Committee (NOC) events.

Away from the field of play, the education programme uses a variety of fun and interactive activities, workshops and team-building exercises to give athletes the opportunity to learn about the Olympic values, explore other cultures, develop the skills to become true ambassadors of their sport, and improve training methods and performance.

The Youth Olympic Games are aimed at bringing together talented young athletes aged from 15 to 18 from around the world. The most recent Summer YOG in Buenos Aires in 2018 featured 4,000 athletes and achieved gender equality for the first time. The latest Winter YOG took place in Lausanne in 2020 and featured 1,872 athletes. Non-athlete participants, namely the Young Reporters, YOG Ambassadors and Athlete Role Models, are also an integral part of the YOG experience.