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PARIS 2024 OLYMPICS

How to become a volunteer at the Paris 2024 Games

Organisers of the Paris 2024 Olympics and Paralympics are looking for 45,000 volunteers who speak either English or French to help out when the French capital hosts the Games.

How to become a volunteer at the Paris 2024 Games
French President of the Paris Organising Committee of the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games Tony Estanguet Photo by Christophe ARCHAMBAULT / AFP

The application process for volunteers for the 2024 Games is now open – and organisers say there is no requirement for helpers to be able to speak French.

There are three main criteria for volunteers; you must be aged 18 or over, you must speak either English or French (or both) and you must be available for a minimum of 10 days during the Olympics or Paralympics in the summer of 2024.

You do not need to be a resident of France, registration is open to everyone – although volunteers travelling from another country will need to organise their own travel and accommodation and will need to ensure they have the correct visa or right to be in France if they are not EU citizens. 

Those who benefit from the 90-day rule can use their 90 day allowance to visit during the Games, while others can enter on a tourist visa – since this will be a short stay and your work is unpaid.

The organisers are particularly keen to recruit volunteers with a disability, and have set an informal goal of 3,000 disabled volunteers as part of the team.

Registration is also now open for phase 2 of the Olympic ticket sales – click HERE for details on how to register

President of the Paris 2024 organising committee Tony Estanguet said: “Our volunteers will be at the heart of the greatest sporting event on the planet and directly contributing to its success.

“The positive energy transmitted by volunteers is unique and they will be the face of the Games.” 

Volunteers will mostly be helping with spectators and the visitor experience (around 60 percent of volunteers roles) with tasks including greeting and directing spectators and media.

Around 35 percent of roles will relate to event organisation such as helping competitors, organising equipment, assisting with timekeeping etc, while five percent of roles will be organisational such as distributing ID cards and equipment for officials.

Most of the volunteers will be needed for Paris and the surrounding area, but 5,000 volunteers are also needed for the others Games venues; Bordeaux, Nantes, Marseille, Nice, Saint-Etienne, Lyon, Lille and Châteauroux.

The sign-up is done online and organisers estimate that completing the form and submitting your application will take between 35 and 45 minutes.

The process is;

  • Head to the volunteer portal on the Paris 2024 website HERE.
  • Fill in your personal details, including what languages you speak
  • Indicate the dates that you will be available – this must be for a minimum of 10 days during the Olympics and/or the Paralympics. The Olympics run from July 26th to August 11th and the Paralympics from August 28th to September 6th – and the areas that you are available to work in eg Paris, Bordeaux, Nantes etc
  • Answer a questionnaire on your skills, previous experiences, areas of interest – this is done in the form of selecting statements based on your personality eg whether you prefer to work alone or in a team
  • Submit the application

The timetable for the volunteer process is as follows;

March 22nd – May 5th – applications open on the online portal. 

  • May – August 2023 – organisers study the profiles of people who have volunteered, at this stage you may be called for a further interview or asked to supply more information. If you have indicated that you speak a language other than your native tongue, at this stage you may be given a short test or interview, in order to confirm that your language skills are at the level you described.
  • September – December 2023 – successful volunteers will be given details of their assignments for the Games
  • First quarter of 2024 – volunteers will be given full details of their work, any training required and issued with their uniforms.
  1. In addition to Olympics volunteers, Paris City Hall is also seeking 5,288 volunteers to help welcome visitors to Paris.
  2. While Games volunteers will be at Olympic and Paralympic venues, City Hall volunteers will be across the rest of Paris – including at tourist sites and Metro and train stations, welcoming visitors and helping them with the practical aspects of their visit to the French capital. 
  1. Volunteers, whether for the Games or City Hall, will not be paid and will be responsible for paying their own accommodation and transport costs during the Games, neither do they get free Games tickets. 

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PARIS 2024 OLYMPICS

Paris Olympics torch relay will involve 10,000 runners

There will be 10,000 torchbearers to carry the Olympic flame as it passes through some 60 French departments ahead of the 2024 Games, Paris Olympic organisers announced on Tuesday.

Paris Olympics torch relay will involve 10,000 runners

After the flame is lit in the traditional ceremony in Olympia, Greece, it will arrive by sea in Marseille aboard the three-master Belem on May 8th.

From there it will travel across France on its way to the Olympic opening ceremony in the capital on July 26th.

There has been speculation that the Olympic flame will be placed on the Eiffel Tower, but the president of the organising committee, Tony Estanguet, told a press conference the final destination had not been decided.

“The Eiffel Tower has not been decided as the lighting location for the cauldron,” he said.

A novelty this time is “collective relays”, which could be groups of up to 24 people, with one carrying the torch.

There will be 3,000 collective and 7,000 individual torchbearers, including equal numbers of men and women aged 15 and over.

Each torchbearer will carry the flame for around 4 minutes over a distance of 200 metres.

A third of the torchbearers will be selected by the organising committee and the sports bodies, another third by relay sponsors Coca-Cola and French bank BPCE, another third by other Olympic partners, and the final 10 percent by the regions hosting the relay.

The International Olympic Committee forbids elected officials and religious figures carrying the flame.

Some French departments refused to take part, deeming the €180,000 cost prohibitive.

The organisers said there would be “an itinerant bubble” of security around the flame provided by the French gendarmes, police and local security forces.

The Paralympic torch relay, which will arrive in Paris on August 28 for the opening of the Paralympic Games, will involve 1,000 torchbearers, and will be shorter.

The record for most torch bearers is 20,000 ahead of the Beijing summer Games in 2008. That relay passed through 19 countries, where it was carried by more than 1,300 bearers, before reaching China. It covered a total of 85,000 miles on its 130 day journey.

For the last Summer Olympics in Japan in 2021, the Olympic torch relay was banned from public thoroughfares in many departments, including Tokyo, because of Covid. For the same reason the relay ahead of the 2022 Winter Games was reduced to three stages in Beijing.

At the London Olympics in 2013, 8,000 people relayed the flame.

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