Industry News
Sweden is moving closer to a making an official bid to host the 2030 Winter Olympics. The Scandinavian nation had emerged as a last minute contender in February this year, after several potential bidders dropped out of the bidding contest, and wrapped up a four-month feasibility study last month.
Barcelona, Spain, withdrew its bid as it could not come to an agreement on hosting the Games in the Pyrenees region, where most of the snow events would be held. Sapporo, Japan, decided to put its bid on ice, following the bribing scandal surrounding the Tokyo Summer Olympics and while Sapporo’s mayor wants to forge ahead with the 2030 bid, the Japanese Olympic Committee said, it would rather support a Sapporo bid, if it was pushed back to 2034. Likewise, Salt Lake City, UT, made it known that they would rather host the 2034 Winter Games, to avoid competing with the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Games.
Swedish sports officials announced last Thursday that following the completion of their feasibility study Stockholm-Åre will make a bid to host the 2030 Winter Olympics. It will be the nation’s ninth Winter Olympic bid, which have only ever hosted Summer Olympics more than a century ago in 1912. After losing out to Milan-Cortina, Italy, for the 2026 Winter Games, Sweden has suddenly found itself as possibly the sole contender for the 2030 Olympics.
“Our preliminary study shows that Sweden has the opportunity, know-how and will to arrange the Winter Games in 2030. It concludes that we are ready to move on to the next stage of the process, which is an ongoing dialogue with the IOC. The IOC has welcomed us to the next phase.”
Hans von Uthmann, Swedish Olympic Committee President
The 2026 Swedish Olympic project plan has been revived and relies even more heavily on existing sports venues with fewer construction projects, to fall in line with the IOC’s push towards more sustainability and less use of purpose-built venues.
Public support for the Olympic bid is big in Sweden, with seven out of ten Swedes supporting the plan. Stockholm’s bid will be again in conjunction with Åre, a ski resort roughly 300 miles north of the Swedish capital in an area called Jämtland, and will utilize a lot of existing infrastructure. The resort is a regular venue on the FIS World Cup circuit and as such well equipped to hosting international ski races.
