In exactly 500 days, the next Youth Olympic Games will begin in Senegal.

On 31 October 2026, Dakar 2026 will launch with the Opening Ceremony at the Abdoulaye Wade Stadium.

As well as being a grand intro to the greatest festival of youth sport in the world, the entire event is set to be historic.

Eight years after the last YOG, Buenos Aires 2018, the world’s most promising athletes will gather together for a competition that has the potential to launch their sporting careers, as well as change their lives.

Dakar 2026 will not only leave an indelible mark on those competing, but – perhaps more so – on the history of sport and the continent of Africa because, for the first time ever, an Olympic competition will be held on African soil.

With excitement growing for the Games 500 days before they commence, read on to discover the reasons why Dakar 2026 will be an unmissable event.

The Youth Olympic Games Dakar 2026 will be the first of its kind.

The entire competition will be held in the West-African country of Senegal. While different editions of the Games have, since Athens 1896, taken place in Europe, the Americas, Oceania and Asia, they have never been hosted in Africa.

But all that will change next year.

The historic nature of the event means it will transcend borders. While Senegal will host the Games, the impact on the entire continent will always be remembered, with the motto of Dakar 2026 paying testament to this: Africa welcomes, Dakar celebrates.

“First, it’s a big responsibility and we’re aware of that” Ibrahima Wade, General Coordinator of Dakar 2026, told Olympics.com in November 2023. “But it’s also a beautiful passion to say that Africa will host its first [Olympic] event on Senegalese land.

“We are reassured to see the entire continent mobilised behind Senegal”.

Dakar 2026 will include a number of events that have never featured on the Olympic programme, with the martial art Wushu the most significant addition among them.

In addition to Wushu, new variations of traditional sports will be on show, including baseball5, which combines elements of baseball with beach wrestling, as a tribute to Senegal’s deep wrestling tradition.

Dakar 2026 will also have full gender equality on the field of play, with a total of 1,350 girls and 1,350 boys competing in 73 medal events per gender and seven mixed events.

In addition to the many nations represented on the field of play, Dakar 2026 will welcome a new team to the competition for the first time in YOG history: The Youth Refugee Olympic Team.

While the Refugee Olympic Team has featured at past Olympic Games, including athletes like Cindy Ngamba, who won a bronze medal in boxing at Paris 2024, this is another first for the Youth Olympic Games.

It’s not by chance that this historic addition is happening at Dakar 2026.

“Africa currently hosts more than 47 million out of the more than 120 million displaced people globally” the International Olympic Committee (IOC) explained during the announcement of the decision to include the Youth Refugee Olympic Team by the Executive Board.

The presence of the Youth Refugee Olympic Team aims to “draw attention to this reality” through a competition that has the potential to inspire young people across the world.

While the names of the athletes involved in the Youth Refugee Olympic Team are not yet known, a selection process began in early 2025 in Kenya.

From 31 October to 13 November 2026, sporting history will be written every day in different sports. New Youth Olympic champions will be crowned, and undoubtedly, records will be broken.

But this is only likely to be the beginning, with history having already shown us that some of the greatest athletes on the planet began their journeys at the Youth Olympic Games.

At Paris 2024, the likes of Brazilian beach volleyball stars Ana Patricia and Duda, athletics sensations Julien Alfred and Noah Lyles, and table tennis players Wang Chuqin and Sun Yingsha, all graduated from the Youth Olympic Games to win gold in the capital of France.

The question now is: who will be next?

While the Youth Olympic Games have not yet begun, their impact is already being felt by young people across Senegal.

Since 2022, the Dakar en Jeux Festival has taken place every year, celebrating the fact that the Youth Olympic Games are headed to Senegal, the land of Teranga (which means hospitality in Wolof). The festival has helped young people across the country discover Olympic sports, Olympic values and more.

Since 2024, the project Impact Spark has been helping to foster healthier habits among young people, while the Dakar 2026 Learning Academy aims to give new graduates and young workers tools to help them succeed, and the Civic and Sporting Olympic Certificate has been rolled out within Senegalese schools.

Dakar 2026 also has a strong commitment to eco-responsibility, with all of these initiatives helping to ensure a strong legacy for the Games before they have even begun.

And all of this is fostering more excitement for what will be a truly historic Youth Olympic Games.