How does a city get chosen to host the Olympics?

Historically, cities submitted formal bids, campaigned for years, and were selected by a vote of IOC members roughly seven years ahead of the Games. That system produced two persistent problems. It was vulnerable to corruption, most notoriously in the Salt Lake City 2002 scandal that led to member expulsions and reforms. And it was expensive and demoralizing, since most bidders spent tens of millions and lost. Public referendums in Boston, Hamburg, Rome, Budapest, and Calgary rejected bids outright once residents examined the costs, leaving some races with only two candidates.

In 2019 the IOC replaced open bidding with a Future Host Commission that holds ongoing confidential conversations with interested regions and recommends a preferred host for ratification, with no fixed timeline. The stated goal is to reduce cost and waste by matching Games to places that already have venues. The underlying problem is durable: academic analysis at Oxford has found that Olympics run over budget essentially without exception, with average overruns exceeding 150 percent, and that the promised long-term economic benefits are usually not realized. That research is the reason the pool of willing hosts shrank, and the reason the IOC now awards Games to established cities well in advance, as with Los Angeles in 2028 and Brisbane in 2032.