IOC President Coventry announces two working groups to strengthen future host election process and protection of the female category

26 June 2025 – Following a “Pause and Reflect” workshop with International Olympic Committee (IOC) Members in Lausanne, Switzerland, this week, IOC President Kirsty Coventry has announced the creation of two working groups to tackle key priorities for the Olympic Movement. The first will review the process for electing future Olympic Summer and Winter Games hosts, while the second will focus on protecting the female category.

Explaining the establishment of the working groups, President Coventry said: “There was overwhelming support from the IOC Members for a pause to be done and a review of the future host election process. We will be setting up a working group to look into this for two main reasons: Members want to be engaged more in the process, and secondly, there was a very big discussion around when the next host should be awarded [the Games]. We want to use the learnings from LA[28] and from Brisbane [2032], as well as French Alps [2030].” The LA and Brisbane Games were awarded 11 years out, while the French Alps were elected only six years ahead. The President added: “That working group is going to be set up in the next week or so to start looking into when we should be selecting the future host and how we should be selecting the future host.”

On the other working group, President Coventry said: “There was overwhelming support from all of the Members who were present here, and those who were able to share with us before they left, that we should protect the female category. With that, we are going to set up a working group made up of experts and International Federations. It was agreed by the Members that the IOC should take a leading role in this, and that we should be the ones to bring together the experts, bring together the International Federations, and ensure that we find consensus. We understand that there will be differences depending on the sports, but it was fully agreed that, as Members and as the IOC, we should make the effort to place emphasis on the protection of the female category, and that we should ensure that this is done in consensus with all the stakeholders.”

The “Pause and Reflect” process will continue with other stakeholders over the coming months.

It was very important for me, as well as for the [Olympic] Movement, to kickstart the review process to look at where we are, where we see the opportunities, where we see the challenges, and how we’re going to address that moving forward.

Kirsty Coventry, IOC President

The workshop with the IOC Members focused on five main topics: the athletes; the Olympic Games; the Olympic Movement; a better world through sport; and reach, engagement and revenue generation.