Olympic Games 2036, 2040 or 2044: Munich named candidate by the German Olympic committee

Will the city of Munich host the Olympics again? The German Olympic Committee (DOSB) chose, on Saturday September 26, the Munich file to apply to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for the organization of the Summer Games in 2036, 2040 or 2044, to the detriment of the Cologne/Rhine-Ruhr file. Germany is launching an Olympic bid for the eighth time since 1972 and the edition of the Summer Olympics organized in Munich, marked by the attack against the Israeli delegation in the Olympic village, which left 11 dead.

The two other editions of the Olympic Games contested on German territory date back to 1936, in winter in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and in summer in Berlin. The 1936 Summer Olympics, whose centenary will take place in ten years, were used for propaganda purposes by Nazi Germany.

A positive popular referendum

A sign of the involvement at the top of the State, the announcement was made by the President of the Republic, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in Baden-Baden (south-west), also in the presence of the former president of the IOC, the German Thomas Bach. The Munich file focuses in particular around the Olympic park in the north of the city, inherited from the 1972 Olympics and which has been undergoing renovation for several years. The city center and the rest of the Munich metropolitan area are also heavily involved, for a compact project.

The city of Munich organized a citizen consultation in the fall of 2025, which resulted in broad support from the population (66.4% for a participation rate of 42%), while two of the last three German Olympic candidacies (Munich 2022 for the Winter Games and Hamburg 2024 for the Summer Games) had encountered the referendum obstacle.

Munich and the DOSB will now continue the phase of "continuous dialogue" with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), until a first selection in March 2027 to switch to a phase of "strategic dialogue", during which the selected files will be evaluated more closely and the candidate host cities will be visited by an IOC commission. At the end of 2028, the IOC will then designate one or more “preferential hosts”, who will have to provide a series of guarantees and will then be decided by mid-2029