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Your guide to keeping up with the Paris Olympics

By Rachel Treisman

Published July 24, 2024 at 12:12 PM EDT

Tens of thousands of athletes, spectators and journalists are descending on Paris to cover the Olympic Games. Many more will be watching from home.

The Paris Olympics are finally here.

More than 10,000 athletes have descended on the French capital for more than two weeks of competition, patriotism and potential drama.

There will be 329 events across 39 sports, including for the first time ever, breaking (aka break-dancing). Competitions will take place as far away as Marseille and Tahiti. Some teams are bringing their own air conditioning to the Olympic Village, which is being cooled by a system of water pipes as part of organizers’ effort to host the “greenest-ever Games.”

Watching the rebroadcast of the opening ceremony?

For all the highlights from the opening ceremony, head to our live updates from Friday afternoon.

More about the games

There are plenty of storylines to watch, from the U.S. women’s gymnastics team’s search for redemption to the rivalry between American and Jamaican sprinters to a new generation of U.S. soccer players taking the field before the opening ceremony even begins.

Officials are bracing for disruptions across the city, from protests to public transit crowding to closures of roads and art galleries. It will all happen against a backdrop of several scandals in the sports world.

Fallout continues from a doping scandal earlier this year, in which nearly two dozen elite Chinese swimmers were cleared by the world’s anti-doping agency despite testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug, sparking accusations of a cover-up and, most recently, a U.S. Department of Justice investigation.

Olympic powerhouse Russia, which traditionally sends hundreds of athletes to the games, is sending only around a dozen this year, after years of doping incidents and heightened international condemnation over its war in Ukraine.

And of course, there’s the Seine, the famously filthy river that winds through Paris and — after years of promises, $1 billion of investment and some bacteria-related setbacks — is finally swimmable just in time for the triathlon and long-distance swimming events.

The Seine is also the site of the opening ceremony on Friday, where some 100 boats carrying tens of thousands of athletes and performers will glide down a 3.7-mile stretch of the river as spectators gather on the river banks to mark what organizers are calling the first outdoor opening ceremony in modern Olympic history.

Here’s how to follow along:

How to watch the opening ceremony

The opening ceremony begins at 1:30 p.m. ET (7:30 p.m. in Paris) and is expected to last a little over four hours. The traveling ceremony will work its way from east to west, ending with a final show at the Trocadéro

NBC, which has a lock on Olympics coverage, will kick things off with a preview show starting at noon ET. It will broadcast the entire ceremony live on TV and stream it via Peacock, NBCOlympics.com, NBC.com and the NBC/NBC Sports apps.

Their opening ceremony coverage will be hosted by Kelly Clarkson, Peyton Manning and Mike Tirico, with contributions from Today hosts Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb.

And don’t worry if you can’t give the spectacle your full attention in the middle of the day. NPR will be live blogging the opening ceremony throughout the afternoon right on NPR.org, and NBC will stream the ceremony again in primetime starting at 7:30 p.m. ET.

How to keep up once the games begin

There are 16 days of competition between Friday's production and the closing ceremony, on August 11. You can see the full schedule here.

And despite the six-hour time difference, NBC says U.S.-based viewers will still be able to watch many of the most anticipated events live.

Competition times will run from roughly 3 a.m. ET to 6 p.m. ET, and the network plans to provide at least nine hours of coverage each day.

That includes carrying live competitions during the mornings and afternoons (both on TV and streaming online and on apps) and a three-hour “enhanced Olympic primetime show” each evening, consisting of highlights and behind-the-scenes moments from the day’s events.

Viewers can also follow along via NBC Olympics’ social media accounts, including on Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok.

And of course, NPR’s own Olympics team will bring you recaps, coverage and color — including on the ground in Paris — online and on air over the next few weeks.

How to follow NPR’s coverage

You can find all of NPR’s Paris Olympics stories (past, present and upcoming) here on our website.

To listen to our broadcast coverage, tune to your local NPR station and stream our radio programming on npr.org or the NPR app.

You can also subscribe to our newsletters, including the daily Up First morning newsletter, for updates and analysis straight to your inbox.