After a full week of the 2024 Olympics we've seen medals, incredible wins, viral competitors and a few upsets too, and that's only the first week of the games; we've got a full second one before the competition wraps up.
US: Peacock | Various cable channels
UK: BBC | iPlayer (free to license fee payers) | Discovery Plus
AU: 9Now (free)
Watch abroad with a VPN
If you want to watch the 2024 Olympics in the UK or Australia, you'll be glad to know that you can do so for FREE on iPlayer and 9Now respectively. If you're abroad when the games are going on, you can watch the 2024 Olympics from anywhere by using a VPN.
As one of the biggest sporting events in the world, there are ways to watch the 2024 Olympic Games in almost every country. In fact, many regions offer multiple ways to watch, and if that's the case we'll let you know all your options.
The 2024 Summer Olympics is being held in Paris, France, with nearly 100 countries competing in various sports until Sunday, August 11 when the final medals are handed out. While Paris is the home of the games, competitions will take place over various French cities, and even as far away as Tahiti!
The Olympic Games in 2024 offers classics of the games like athletics, swimming and cycling to taekwondo, sport climbing and surfing. New for the Paris games is 'breaking', or break dancing, which has featured in the Youth Olympic Games before but never the proper games. You can find a full list of the sports below.
So here it is, we'll help you figure out how to watch the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris, whether it's online or on your TV.
How to watch the 2024 Paris Olympic games in the US
In the US, you have several options for watching the Summer Olympics.
The most expansive coverage comes from Peacock, which will stream literally every sport taking place. It's arguably the best Olympic showing of any country so far.
Peacock is also set to host loads of features so Olympic fans can watch as much as possible: Live Actions will let you set prompts to jump to new activities that are starting or jump to an overview, Discovery Multiview will let you stream four sports at the same time and you can also create a viewing schedule, search by sport or athlete and keep up to date with all the medals and awards that have been issued.
Each month, Peacock costs $5.99 for its ad-enabled tier, and you can drop ads for $11.99 monthly. An annual plan costs the same as 10 months, so $59.99 for ad-enabled and $119.99 for ad-free. This is after a price change in August 2023 so it's unlikely the price will go up again before the games.
Your other option for watching the Olympic games is on broadcast TV, with a handful of channels confirmed to air coverage including USA, E!, CNBC, the Golf Channel, NBC, NBC Sports and Telemundo. The latter will offer Spanish-language commentary.
The exact schedule for which channel will air which sports has yet to be confirmed, but you'll have to either use a cable subscription or live TV streaming service to watch.
Each of the above channels is on DirecTV Stream, Fubo, Hulu with Live TV and YouTube TV, and Sling TV has them all too except NBC Sports. It's possible that, as we get closer to the Olympics, more channels will announce coverage too.
How to watch the 2024 Paris Olympic games in the UK
In the UK, the BBC has broadcast rights to the 2024 Olympic Games, and it's already confirmed its coverage plans... but be warned, there's not much of it!
BBC Sport will have two concurrent live options, both of which are free to license fee payers.
Firstly, either BBC One or BBC Two will be broadcasting live coverage of Olympic events, with the BBC pledging over 250 hours of Olympic coverage over the event.
Secondly, iPlayer will host a live stream called Olympics Extra which will show loads of events that the main channel isn't. Since iPlayer also lets you watch live TV channels, this will be a one-stop shop for all of the BBC's coverage if you'd like to watch online.
Given that far more than two sports take place at any one time in the busiest periods of the Olympics, it means that the BBC will miss lots of events in its coverage. So if you're into a niche sport or want to stream non-stop from one event without the BBC's coverage cutting away, you may need to find another way to watch...
... and such an option exists! Discovery Plus is set to show a lot more of the Olympic games, and while it usually costs £6.99 per month for its Standard plan, a temporary deal lets you sign up for £3.99 monthly until the end of the year.
How to watch 2024 Paris Olympic games in Australia
The official and exclusive Olympics broadcaster in Australia is the Nine Network, so you'll be able to use its various channels to watch Olympic coverage on TV.
Online, sports fans will have lots to watch, because Channel 9's free streaming service 9Now is rolling out an upgrade for the olympics so that it'll offer an extra 40 channels full of live sports.
So you'll be able to stream 2024 Olympic game coverage to your heart's content, and it won't cost you anything.
How to watch 2024 Paris Olympic games everywhere else
If you're going to be away from your normal TV setup but still want to watch the Olympics, you might run into some problems. Thankfully, you can solve this exact issue with a Virtual Private Network (VPN).
A VPN lets you change your IP address to that of the area of what you want to watch, meaning you can tune in to your favorite sports, shows or other content even if you're not there. Our favorite is NordVPN, which is the No. 1-rated VPN in the world right now according to our sister site, TechRadar.
How to use a VPN to watch any stream
- Download the app at NordVPN
- Choose the location of the streaming service you want to watch (UK, US, etc)
- Navigate to the streaming service and start watching!
Olympic sports
Here's a full list of each of the sports that'll be represented at the Paris Summer Olympics. There are 48 in total.
The full Olympic schedule is so long that we couldn't possibly list it all here, but in our individual event articles linked below, you'll find schedules per sport.
- Archery
- Artistic gymnastics
- Artistic swimming
- Athletics
- Badminton
- Basketball
- Basketball (3v3)
- Beach volleyball
- BMX freestyle cycling
- BMX racing cycling
- Boxing
- Breaking
- Diving
- Dressage equestrian
- Eventing equestrian
- Fencing
- Field hockey
- Freestyle wrestling
- Football
- Golf
- Greco-Roman wrestling
- Handball
- Judo
- Jumping equestrian
- Modern pentathlon
- Marathon swimming
- Mountain biking
- Rhythmic gymnastics
- Road cycling
- Rowing
- Rugby sevens
- Sailing
- Shooting
- Skateboarding
- Slalom canoeing
- Spring canoeing
- Sport climbing
- Surfing
- Swimming
- Table tennis
- Taekwondo
- Tennis
- Track cycling
- Trampoline gymnastics
- Triathlon
- Volleyball
- Water polo
- Weightlifting
Olympic countries
Below you can find an entire list of all the countries confirmed to be fielding athletes in the 2024 Paris Olympics. We've also included the sports that they're entering, at least the ones that have been confirmed at the time of writing, though this list will grow as more athletes enter.
- Algeria (athletics, cycling)
- Argentina (cycling, rugby sevens)
- Armenia (shooting)
- Australia (artistic swimming, athletics, diving, equestrian, rugby sevens, shooting, surfing, swimming)
- Austria (artistic swimming, athletics, shooting, swimming)
- Azerbaijan (boxing, shooting)
- Bahamas (athletics)
- Bahrain (athletics)
- Barbados (athletics)
- Belgium (athletics, boxing, equestrian, swimming)
- Bolivia (athletics)
- Bosnia and Herzegovina (swimming)
- Botswana (athletics)
- Brazil (athletics, cycling, diving, football, rugby sevens, shooting, surfing, swimming)
- British Virgin Islands (athletics)
- Bulgaria (boxing, gymnastics, shooting, swimming)
- Burkina Faso (athletics, cycling)
- Cameroon (athletics)
- Canada (athletics, cycling, diving, gymnastics)
- China (athletics, cycling, diving, equestrian, gymnastics, shooting)
- Chinese Taipei (athletics, shooting)
- Colombia (athletics, diving, football)
- Costa Rica (surfing)
- Croatia (athletics, boxing)
- Cuba (athletics, shooting)
- Czech Republic (canoeing, modern pentathlon, shooting)
- Denmark (boxing, equestrian, handball, shooting, swimming)
- Djibouti (athletics)
- Dominican Republic (athletics, football)
- Ecuador (athletics)
- Egypt (artistic swimming, football, modern pentathlon, shooting, swimming)
- Eritrea (cycling)
- Estonia (athletics, swimming)
- Ethiopia (athletics)
- Fiji (rugby sevens)
- Finland (athletics)
- France (archery, artistic swimming, athletics, badminton, basketball, boxing, breaking, canoeing, cycling, diving, equestrian, fencing, field hockey, football, golf, gymnastics, handball, judo, modern pentathlon, rubgy sevens, sailing, shooting, skateboarding, sport climbing, surfing, swimming, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, triathlon, volleyball, water polo, weightlifting)
- The Gambia (athletics)
- Georgia (boxing, shooting)
- Germany (archery, athletics, canoeing, diving, equestrian, gymnastics, modern pentathlon, shooting, swimming, table tennis, triathlon)
- Great Britain (archery, athletics, boxing, canoeing, diving, equestrian, gymnastics, modern pentathlon, rugby sevens, shooting, swimming, triathlon)
- Greece (athletics, shooting, swimming)
- Guatemala (athletics)
- Hong Kong (swimming)
- Hungary (athletics, boxing, modern pentathlon, shooting, swimming)
- India (athletics, shooting)
- Iran (shooting)
- Ireland (athletics, boxing, equestrian, rugby sevens, swimming)
- Israel (athletics, football, gymnastics, swimming)
- Italy (archery, athletics, boxing, diving, gymnastics, modern pentathlon, shooting, surfing)
- Jamaica (athletics)
- Japan (athletics, cycling, diving, equestrian, gymnastics, surfing, swimming)
- Kazakhstan (cycling)
- Kenya (athletics)
- Lithuania (athletics, modern pentathlon, swimming)
- Luxembourg (athletics)
- Malaysia (diving)
- Mali (football)
- Mexico (athletics, cycling, diving, swimming)
- Moldova (archery)
- Morocco (athletics, breaking, football)
- Netherlands (athletics, breaking, equestrian, swimming)
- New Zealand (artistic swimming, athletics, equestrian, rugby sevens, surfing)
- Nigeria (athletics, cycling)
- Norway (athletics, handball, shooting, swimming)
- Pakistan (shooting)
- Peru (athletics)
- The Philippines (athletics)
- Poland (athletics, equestrian, modern pentathlon, shooting, swimming)
- Portugal (athletics, surfing, swimming)
- Puerto Rico (athletics)
- Qatar (athletics, shooting)
- Romania (athletics, boxing, swimming)
- Saint Lucia (athletics)
- Saudi Arabia (equestrian)
- Senegal (athletics)
- Serbia (boxing, shooting)
- Singapore (swimming)
- Slovakia (shooting)
- Slovenia (athletics)
- South Africa (artistic swimming, athletics, cycling, diving, surfing, swimming)
- South Korea (diving, shooting)
- Spain (archery, athletics, boxing, diving, football, gymnastics, modern pentathlon, shooting, swimming)
- Sweden (athletics, boxing, diving, equestrian, shooting, swimming)
- Switzerland (athletics, cycling, equestrian, modern pentathlon, shooting, swimming)
- Suriname (swimming)
- Tanzania (athletics)
- Thailand (cycling)
- Trinidad and Tobago (athletics, swimming)
- Tunisia (athletics, swimming)
- Turkey (athletics, boxing, shooting, swimming)
- Uganda (TBC)
- Ukraine (athletics, boxing, diving, football, modern pentathlon, shooting, swimming)
- United Arab Emirates (equestrian)
- United States (athletics, basketball, cycling, diving, equestrian, football, gymnastics, judo, rugby sevens, shooting, surfing, swimming)
- Uruguay (rugby sevens)
- Venezuela (athletics)
- Vietnam (cycling)
- Zimbabwe (athletics)
Everything else you need to know about the 2024 Summer Olympics
When do the 2024 Summer Olympics take place?
The opening ceremony for the 2024 Summer Olympics takes place on Friday, July 26 2024, however competitions actually begin two days prior on Wednesday, July 24.
The competition continues until the closing ceremony on Sunday, August 11, which is the last day of play. However gold metal events go on from the first full day of games, on Saturday, July 27, all the way until the closing ceremony.
Towards the end of the two weeks, more and more events take place. While the first week generally has between 10 and 20 events daily, the last week sees that go to a peak of 39 the day before the closing ceremony.
Where does the 2024 Summer Olympics take place?
Paris, France is hosting the 2024 Summer Olympic games, and most of the competitions will take place within its city limits.
For example tennis and boxing take place at the Roland Garros Stadium, while fencing and taekwondo are hosted at the Grand Palais des Champs-Élysées.
A few sports are taking place further afield in France. Football preliminaries and quarterfinals are taking place in Nice, Nantes, Bordeaux and more cities, while Vaires-sur-Marne gets some river sports including Rowing and the two canoeing strands, and the shooting contestants will need to shoot over to Châteauroux.
Only one event is taking place outside mainland France and that's surfing, which is being hosted in Tahiti in French Polynesia. This is nearly 16,000km from France, with a direct flight time of roughly 21 hours.
The Olympic Opening Ceremony will take place at the Jardins du Trocadéro while the Olympic Village is at L'Île-Saint-Denis in northern Paris.
