Everything you need to know about the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics

In exactly one week's time, on 26 July, one of the major sporting events of the last four years will kick off - the 2024 Summer Olympics. The Dailysports team tells you what you need to know about the opening ceremony of the Olympics.

This opening ceremony will truly be historic, as the games in Paris will open in a unique way and here we have two "firsts". Firstly, the opening ceremony itself will be held outside the Olympic Stadium for the first time. Secondly, the opening of the games will take place on water.

For this purpose, almost one and a half billion euros have been allocated to clean the main waterway of Paris - the River Seine. Before that, for a century it was so dirty that it was forbidden to swim in it.

Each national delegation will have its own boat on which to travel during the opening ceremony, and the boats will be equipped with television cameras to broadcast the action from the water.

• Read also: Football at the 2024 Summer Olympics: participants, format, where and when matches will take place

The boats will start from the Austerlitz Bridge to the Trocadero Square, and the total length of the route will be in the region of six kilometres. The procession will pass the Cité Island, where the Cathedral of Our Lady of Paris is located, as well as the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, among others.

Also boats with athletes will pass some locations of the Olympics, which are located near the Seine: Place de la Concorde, Grand Palais, Alexander III Bridge.

As for the Olympic torch relay, it arrived in France from the Temple of Hera in Greece back in May. In total, it will involve 400 locations and 11 thousand runners on the territory of the whole country of the Games.

According to media reports, members of the K-pop band BTS Jin, footballer Didier Drogba, basketball player Toney Parker, former prisoners of Nazi concentration camps, astronauts, coaches, students and a host of others took part in the torch relay.

However, if the opening ceremony is overly threatened, French President Emmanuel Macron said all celebrations could be moved from the Seine embankment to a closed stadium.

The number of tickets for the opening ceremony has also been almost halved. From the originally announced 600 thousand spectators, only 300 thousand will be able to see the opening ceremony.

• Read also: Basketball at the 2024 Summer Olympics: participants, format, where and when matches will take place

Almost 20 thousand soldiers and more than 45 thousand police officers, as well as almost two thousand soldiers and policemen from other countries, will be involved in providing security. The airspace will be closed over Paris itself and within a radius of 150 kilometres from 19:00 to midnight.

In addition to law enforcement officers, the opening ceremony will involve almost three thousand artists and 400 dancers, who, however, in the midst of preparations for the opening of the games announced a possible strike on the opening day of the Olympics, as well as declared their intentions to boycott the rehearsals of the opening of the Paralympics. All because of poor working conditions.

• Read also: Volleyball at the 2024 Summer Olympics: participants, format, where and when matches will take place

But, hopefully, these nuances will not overshadow the event, which will mark the start of one of the major events in the world of sport for the next four years.