Mexico has decided to withdraw its bid to host the 2036 Summer Olympic Games, citing “tough competition.”
Mexican authorities had submitted a letter of intent to host the Games in either 2036 or 2040 to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) last March. However, during a sponsorship event yesterday (January 18), Mexican Olympic Committee president María José Alcalá said the country had decided only to consider launching a bid for the Youth Games.
She said: “We had a talk with the IOC and we saw that the competition is very tough.
“We are turning around to see if we can have the bid for the Youth Olympic Games, which is where we would have a great chance.
“It would be before the 2036 Games ... We are in talks with the IOC.”
Alcala added Mexico would also consider bidding for the 2027 Pan American Games after the northern state of Nuevo Leon expressed its interest in hosting the event.
Earlier this month, the Colombian city of Barranquilla was stripped of its rights to host the 2027 edition of the quadrennial multi-sport tournament for North and South American nations after failing to transfer funding to the PanAm Spots Organization governing body by the deadline, opening the door for new bids.
Other countries that have expressed their intention to bid for the 2036 Olympics include South Korea, India, Egypt, and Qatar.
Mexico previously hosted the Summer Olympic Games once before, in 1968.
In October 2022, Christophe De Kepper, director general of the IOC, told media that the organization was talking to “10 interested national Olympic committees and regions across four continents” around future candidacies for the Summer Olympics, with the 2036 games the next to have a host or hosts awarded.
After the 2024 Olympics takes place in Paris, Los Angeles in the US will host the 2028 edition before the 2032 games are staged in Brisbane, Australia.
The Brisbane games are the first to have been allocated under the IOC’s new selection process for host nations and cities.
The 2036 hosting rights are likely to be allocated in 2026, the year after IOC president Thomas Bach is (currently) set to stand down.
Qatar’s interest in hosting the flagship event comes after its successful staging of soccer’s FIFA men’s World Cup, while Indonesia's bid centers on the country’s future capital city of Nusantara.
Last March, the mayor of South Korea’s capital Seoul, Oh Se-hoon, said his city would pursue a bid for the 2036 Olympic Games without attempting to involve North Korea in any way, as was once considered a possibility for the 2032 edition.
At the time of the South Korean proposal to jointly host the 2032 Olympics with its northern isolationalist neighbor, Bach had said that a joint bid would be a “historic initiative.”
