Paris is hosting this year’s summer Olympics and Paralympics and although most events are in and around the capital there are some competitions behind held in other parts of France, including sailing in Marseille and football in several towns including Lille, Lyon, Bordeaux and Rennes.

MAP Find the Paris Olympic locations

If you don’t yet have tickets – there are still some Olympics tickets available via the official ticket site plus more on the resale site. Meanwhile tickets for the Paralympics (which run between August 28th and September 8th) remain available.

Big screens

If you are in or around Paris you will find big screens and fan parks showing a selections of Games events, starting with the opening ceremony which takes place in the evening of Friday, July 26th.

How to watch the Olympics opening ceremony

The Paris fan parks will continue to broadcast coverage throughout the Games.

Several of France’s other big cities also have fan zones – including Marseille which is hosting a giant screen on the beach, allowing visitors to simultaneously sunbathe and watch sports. 

Likewise sports bars and cafés around France may be showing some or all of the Games on TV.

On TV

But if you prefer to remain at home, the good news that there is lots of TV coverage and all of it is on the free-to-air channels.

The opening ceremony will be screened on France 2, France 3 and France 4, plus the pay TV channel Eurosport, from 7.30pm to 11pm on Friday, July 26th.

As you would expect, France is quite excited about its home Games and the state broadcaster France Télévisions is committed to showing all events. These will be split between the TV channels France 2 and France 3 and the online platform france.tv/paris-24

On terrestrial TV, France 2 and France 3 go into ‘Olympics mode’ from July 27th – France 2 will be showing a mix of live coverage and round-ups from 6.30am to 11.15pm each day, while France 3 will run the same from 8.55am to 11.30pm. The broad breakdown is that France 3 will concentrate nf team sports while France 2 focuses more in individual events, although there will undoubtedly be some crossover.

Meanwhile the online platform will have in-depth coverage of, among other things, the urban sports.

Naturally the French coverage will be in French. If you want to watch with English commentary you can head to France 24 which will be providing some coverage, or watch some of the foreign broadcasters (subject to rights and accessibility) such as the UK’s BBC, Ireland’s RTE or the USA’s NBC.

You can find the list of TV channels across the world who will show Olympics coverage HERE.