All you need to know about the Paris Paralympics
We've put together a guide with everything you need to know about this summer's Paralympics.
Paris will stage the summer Games for the first time in 2024. It is the second time France will have hosted a Paralympics after the 1992 Winter Games in Tignes and Albertville.
About 4,400 athletes from around the world will take part in 22 sports, cheered on by crowds again after the rescheduled Tokyo Games in 2021 were held behind closed doors.
When are the Paralympics?
The Paralympics will begin with the opening ceremony on Wednesday, 28 August.
A total of 22 gold medals will be decided on the opening day of competition on Thursday, 29 August.
The final day on Sunday, 8 September will feature medal events in wheelchair basketball, Para-powerlifting, Para-canoe and wheelchair marathons as well as the closing ceremony, which will take place at the Stade de France.
What do we know about the opening ceremony of the Paralympics?
Like the Olympic opening ceremony, the Paralympic ceremony will be held outside a stadium for the first time.
But it will not feature boats floating down the River Seine. Instead, athletes will take part in what is being described as a ‘people’s parade’ travelling past some of Paris' most iconic landmarks, located along the route between the Champs-Elysees and the Place de la Concorde.
Spectators can watch for free along the route before the official parade and before formalities take place in front of ticket-holders at the Place de la Concorde. Organisers estimate that around 50,000 people will watch the ceremony.
The ceremony will feature the usual mix of music and movement and performers with disabilities will play an integral role in the show.
Which venues are being used for the Paralympics?
Many of the venues being used at the Olympics will also stage Paralympic events.
The Stade de France will host the athletics, the La Defense Arena the swimming, wheelchair tennis will be at Roland Garros, and the picturesque Chateau de Versailles gardens will be the venue for the Para-equestrian events.
The Grand Palais, normally a venue for art and sport events, will host wheelchair fencing and Para-taekwondo, while the blind football competition will be in a specially built stadium at the foot of the iconic Eiffel Tower.
Para-triathletes will compete in the centre of Paris, with the swim leg due to take place in the River Seine.
How can I watch the Paralympics?
Channel 4 will show the Games in the UK with more than 1,300 hours of live sport airing across Channel 4, More4, Channel 4 Streaming and Channel 4 Sport’s YouTube.
How to follow the Paralympics on the BBC
BBC Radio 5 Live will have commentary and updates from key events in Paris, starting with 5 Live Drive from 16:00 BST.
There will also be programmes dedicated to the Paralympics on most evenings, usually between 19:00 and 21:00.
The BBC Sport website will have live text commentary and reports on each day of the Games.
Which sports feature at the Paralympics?
There are 22 sports in the Paralympic programme:
Blind football
Boccia
Goalball
Para-archery
Para-athletics
Para-badminton
Para-canoe
Para-cycling
Para-equestrian
Para-judo
Para-powerlifting
Para-rowing
Para-swimming
Para-table tennis
Para-taekwondo
Para-triathlon
Shooting Para-sport
Sitting volleyball
Wheelchair basketball
Wheelchair fencing
Wheelchair rugby
Wheelchair tennis
Which new sports are at the Paralympics?
Unlike the past two editions of the Games, where Para-triathlon and Para-canoe (Rio) and Para-taekwondo and Para-badminton (Tokyo) made their debuts, no new sports are included in the Paris programme.
However, the badminton and taekwondo programmes have been expanded and there are a record number of medal events for women.
How many gold medals will be won?
A total of 549 gold medals will be up for grabs.
Is Great Britain known as Team GB at the Paralympics?
No – Team GB is a term used for the British Olympic team only.
The organisation responsible for the Paralympic movement in the UK is the British Paralympic Association and the correct name for the Paralympic team who will be representing Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Paris is ParalympicsGB.
Who is competing for ParalympicsGB and how many medals could they win?
ParalympicsGB will compete in 19 sports in Paris, having failed to qualify in blind football, goalball and sitting volleyball.
The GB team will feature 215 athletes and you can find the confirmed names of who will be competing here.
Among the stars in action will be Britain’s most successful Paralympian, Sarah Storey, who is competing at a ninth Games – a British record - and will be hoping to add to her 17 gold medals.
Wheelchair tennis player Alfie Hewett will be aiming to win a first gold medal having completed a career Grand Slam by winning the Wimbledon singles title in July. Wheelchair racers Hannah Cockroft and Sammi Kinghorn, Para-cyclist Jody Cundy, table tennis player Will Bayley and swimmer Alice Tai will also be among those in action.
In Tokyo, Britain finished second in the medal table behind China with 124 medals, including 41 golds.
UK Sport has set a medal range of between 100 and 140 medals for the GB team.
How many nations will compete at the Paralympics?
The increase in the profile of Para-sport has meant a gradual rise in the number of nations participating in a Paralympic Games.
The Paris Games will feature around 4,400 athletes from a record 168 delegations – still short of the 207 delegations who competed at the Olympics.
The total includes 167 National Paralympic Committees (NPC), an eight-strong Refugee Paralympic Team (RPT) and a Neutral Paralympic Athletes (NPA) delegation from Russia and Belarus.
The previous record was 164 delegations at London 2012 while the previous highest number of athletes at a Paralympic Games was 4,393 at Tokyo 2020.
Three NPCs – Eritrea, Kiribati and Kosovo – will make their Paralympic debut in the French capital.
Can athletes from Russia and Belarus compete at the Paris Paralympics?
Athletes from Russia and Belarus will be allowed to compete at the Games as neutrals and the Neutral Paralympic Athletes delegation will feature up to 90 competitors from Russia and eight from Belarus.
They will wear neutral uniforms that must not feature any national colours, flag, country name or national emblem, symbol or designation.
They will compete under an NPA flag, and will not feature on the medals table or march in the opening or closing ceremonies.
Should a neutral athlete win a gold medal, the Paralympic anthem will be played.
All NPA were independently vetted to ensure they have not supported the Ukraine war and are not contracted to the military.
When did the Paralympics start?
Although what became known as the first Paralympics took place in Rome in 1960, the seeds of the Games were sown more than a decade earlier in Britain.
Sir Ludwig Guttman, a neurologist who was working with World War II veterans with spinal injuries at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury, began using sport as part of the rehabilitation programmes of his patients.
In 1948, he set up a competition with other hospitals to coincide with the London Olympics and over the next decade his sporting idea was adopted by other spinal injury units in Britain.
In 1960, 400 wheelchair athletes from 23 countries came to the Italian capital to compete in 57 medal events across eight sports at the ninth Annual International Stoke Mandeville Games, now regarded as the Rome 1960 Paralympic Games.
