Key Points
- The 23rd Commonwealth Games run July 23 to August 2 in Glasgow.
- Ten sports at four venues, down from 19 sports at Birmingham 2022.
- Core budget is about £114m (~$153m), with £100m from Commonwealth Sport.
- Victoria, Australia quit as host in 2023 and paid A$380m (~$266m).
The 2026 Commonwealth Games open on Thursday, July 23 at Glasgow's OVO Hydro, and the number that defines them is not a medal tally. It is the budget. Organisers are staging an 11-day, 74-nation multi-sport event on a core operating budget of roughly £114m (~$153m) — against the £778m (~$1.04bn) Birmingham spent in 2022, according to Daily Maverick, which puts the all-in Glasgow figure nearer £160m (~$214m); £114m is the core operating budget organisers publish. About 3,000 athletes from 74 Commonwealth Games Associations will contest 215 gold medals across 10 sports through August 2. It is the 23rd edition of the Games and the fourth staged in Scotland, after Edinburgh in 1970 and 1986 and Glasgow in 2014.
Glasgow is hosting because nobody else would. The city took the event on in October 2024, roughly 21 months out, after the original host walked away and a replacement bid collapsed.
Why Victoria walked away
On July 18, 2023, Victorian Premier Dan Andrews announced the Australian state would not host the 2026 Games, which had been planned across four regional hubs in Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo and Gippsland. Andrews said the cost could exceed A$7bn (~$4.9bn) against a budgeted A$2.6bn (~$1.8bn), per Al Jazeera.
“Frankly A$6-A$7bn for a 12-day sporting event, we're not doing that,” Andrews said. “I will not take money out of hospitals and schools to fund an event that is three times the cost as estimated and budgeted for last year.”
Victoria had won the hosting rights in 2022 after no other country bid. Breaking the contract cost it a A$380m (~$266m) settlement with the Commonwealth Games Federation, its commercial arm and Commonwealth Games Australia, reached through mediation and reported by SBS News in August 2023.
The settlement was not the whole bill. A March 2024 audit by the Victorian Auditor-General's Office put the total cost of securing, planning for and then withdrawing from the Games at more than A$589m (~$412m), with the A$380m settlement accounting for 64% of it. The auditor found the original business case “underestimated the costs and overstated the benefits,” and that the untested regional multi-city delivery model was the main cost driver. Departments did not tell the government that hosting might be unfeasible until June and July 2023; the withdrawal came on July 18.
What Glasgow cut
Birmingham 2022 ran 19 sports. Glasgow 2014 ran 17. Glasgow 2026 runs 10: athletics, swimming, artistic gymnastics, track cycling, netball, weightlifting, boxing, judo, bowls and 3x3 basketball, with para events integrated into the programme. Thirteen sports and disciplines on the Birmingham programme are gone this year — badminton, beach volleyball, cricket, diving, field hockey, mountain biking, rhythmic gymnastics, road cycling, rugby sevens, squash, table tennis, triathlon and wrestling. Glasgow kept track cycling but dropped the road and mountain events, and kept swimming but dropped diving. Malaysia's Olympic council, which had explored a bid of its own before withdrawing, publicly accepted the loss of badminton, diving, hockey and squash, the sports that carry most of its medal history.
The para programme moved the other way: 47 para finals across six sports, the largest para medal programme in Commonwealth Games history, per Wikipedia's Games programme summary.
Competition happens at four venues inside what organisers call an eight-mile Games corridor: the Scottish Event Campus, Tollcross International Swimming Centre, Scotstoun Stadium and the Emirates Arena complex, which houses the Commonwealth Arena and the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome. All four are existing facilities, most of them built or upgraded for 2014. Nothing new was constructed. There is no athletes' village either — competitors are housed in hotels.
Who is paying for it
Commonwealth Sport is putting £100m (~$134m) into the core budget, money that traces back to the Victoria settlement. The rest comes from commercial revenue — ticketing, sponsorship, broadcast rights and merchandise. Organisers state the Games are being delivered without the need for public funding or a public underwrite from Glasgow City Council, the Scottish Government or the UK Government. That is the first time a Commonwealth Games has been structured that way, and it is the specific mechanism that made a 21-month turnaround possible: no capital programme means no capital risk.
The opening ceremony
The ceremony starts at 20:00 BST on July 23 inside the OVO Hydro — the first time a Commonwealth Games opening ceremony has been staged entirely within an indoor arena, rather than a stadium. It is built around the arrival of all 74 Batons. KT Tunstall headlines a Scottish bill that also carries Nina Nesbitt, Nathan Evans, Callum Beattie, the duo Saint PHNX and BRIT Award-winning singer-songwriter Tom Walker, with electronic folk duo Valtos playing the Parade of Nations under ceremonies chief Louisa Mahon.
Two names are missing from the entry lists. Australian sprinter Gout Gout pulled out in February to prioritise the World Under-20 Championships in Eugene, Oregon, which run August 5-9, days after Glasgow closes. He will not run there either — Gout tore his left hamstring in training in Brisbane and announced on July 9 that the injury had ended his 2026 season. Five-time Olympic swimming champion Kaylee McKeown withdrew with glandular fever, per ESPN. Australia is still sending 256 athletes, including 86 in track and field — a discipline that has spent 2026 producing results like Trayvon Bromell's upset of Noah Lyles in Paris.
What happens after 2026
The 2030 Centenary Games went to Amdavad, India, ratified by the Commonwealth Sport membership at the General Assembly held in Glasgow. It is India's second Games after Delhi 2010, and the programme expands again to 15-17 sports. Amdavad beat Abuja for the slot, and Commonwealth Sport says it will work with Nigeria toward 2034.
The leaner model is what brought hosts back to the table: seven nations lodged formal expressions of interest in 2030 or 2034 after the 74 associations were canvassed in January 2025, Canada, India, Nigeria and New Zealand among them. Commonwealth Sport president Dr Donald Rukare, elected in November 2025 as the body’s first African president, called Glasgow “in many ways a rebirth of the Games and a rebirth of our movement,” and described the new approach as “co-creating the sporting programme with our hosts” — the sport list is now negotiable per host rather than fixed by the federation.
Glasgow is the latest global sporting set-piece to land in Britain this month, after Ryan Fox won the 154th Open Championship at Royal Birkdale on July 19, and it follows a summer defined by the expanded World Cup in North America, where Spain beat Argentina for a second title. Those events grew. This one shrank on purpose, and the Commonwealth movement is betting that shrinking is what keeps it alive.
Others covering this
Daily Maverick — "Can a reimagined Commonwealth Games secure its future?"
"When Australia withdrew as host of the 2026 Commonwealth Games three years ago, many questioned not only whether the event would survive, but whether it should survive.…"
Al Jazeera — "Australia's Victoria pulls out of hosting 2026 Commonwealth Games"
"The decision made over cost concerns represents a major blow for an event that has lost relevance in recent years."
SBS News — "Victoria to pay $380 million to Commonwealth Games for cancelled event"
"The settlement falls under what was set aside in the 2022/23 budget for tourism and major events."
Source: Glasgow 2026, Victorian Auditor-General's Office and Al Jazeera.
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