This is an updated version of an article first published in 2012. To see previous versions, view all Olympics articles on PolGeoNow.
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| Map of all countries in the Olympics and their regional associations. By Evan Centanni, modeled after this map. |
The 2024 Summer Olympics are officially opening this Friday, July 26. This year they're officially hosted by the city of Paris, France, though events will be held all around the country. This is the sixth time France has hosted the games (including the Winter Olympics). It's also Paris's third time to host the Olympics, though it took a break for 100 years. The only other city to host three times is London, in the UK.
Of course, it wouldn't be an Olympic opening ceremony without the
Parade of Nations. But how many countries are there in the games, and is
everyone included? Read on for PolGeoNow's updated guide to the roster of
Olympic Nations...
How many countries are in the Olympics?
The
International Olympic Committee (IOC), presides over the Olympic Games and related sporting events, currently recognizes 206 recognized "Olympic Nations", represented by a National Olympic Committee (NOC) in each country.
However, one of those NOCs is currently suspended from IOC membership, and another is also banned temporarily from participating in the Olympic Games - so you might also put the number at 205 or 204 depending on how you define it (for details, see below under "Which countries aren't in the Olympics at all?").
The NOCs that make up the IOC are organized into five continental
associations (see map above).[1] Though NOCs are tied to countries, they're actually required to be separate and independent from the countries' governments.
If 206 countries sounds like too many, don't worry - you're not going crazy. It's true, the United Nations only recognizes 195 countries worldwide (See: How Many Countries Are There in the World?). But it turns out the IOC used to be more relaxed than the UN about requirements for nationhood...
Dependent territories that are Olympic Nations
Before 1995, countries' overseas territories and other dependencies were allowed to qualify for the Olympics on their own, since many are self-governing and technically not "part of" the countries they belong to. The ones that got approved before the rules changed have been grandfathered in, and today ten of those territories hold Olympic Nation status:
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| Click to enlarge: Dependent territories and partially-recognized countries admitted to the Olympics. |
Aruba (Netherlands)
Bermuda (UK)
British Virgin Islands (UK)
Cayman Islands (UK)
Puerto Rico (US)
Virgin Islands (US)Asia
Hong Kong (China)Oceania
American Samoa (US)
Guam (US)
Cook Islands (New Zealand)Unrecognized countries that are Olympic Nations
These days, to qualify as a new Olympic Nation you have to be an "independent State recognised by the international community".
The usual way to meet that requirement is to become an official member
of the United Nations (UN). But there are actually three non-UN-member
countries that also participate:
Taiwan ("Chinese Taipei")
Palestine
Kosovo
Taiwan
- which is claimed by China but governed as an independent country under a
pre-communist version of the Chinese constitution - was allowed to stay
after the communist party government in Beijing took over UN representation of Mainland China in 1979. But a compromise deal made at
the time requires Taiwan's team to be called "Chinese Taipei", after Taiwan's capital city.[2]
Disputed Palestine, whose claimed territory is largely controlled by Israel, was admitted in 1995 for the sake of athletes in the Gaza Strip and West Bank areas, most of whose residents don't have Israeli citizenship. Palestine has since been recognized as a UN observer state, but at the time it had no UN status - though it did already have individual recognition from about 100 of the world's countries (more than half of the UN's members).
Learn More: Who Controls What in the Israel-Palestine Dispute?
Kosovo, the third non-UN country in the Olympics, is a more recent addition. A region that controversially declared independence from Serbia
in 2008, Kosovo has been blocked from UN membership by objections from
Serbia, Russia, and other countries. Still, the IOC decided to admit Kosovo as an Olympic Nation in 2014 after about 55% of UN member countries had recognized it as independent.
Which countries are new to the Olympics?
No entirely new Olympic Nations have been approved by the IOC since the Rio 2016 games. Those Summer Olympics introduced Kosovo - the disputed, self-proclaimed country mentioned above - and South Sudan, which had become independent and joined the UN in 2011 before achieving Olympic Nation status in 2015. Before that, the last Olympics to include new countries were the Beijing 2008 games, when UN members the Marshall Islands, Montenegro, and Tuvalu were first added to the list.
However, there have been some name changes since 2016. Between 2018 and the delayed "Tokyo 2020" games in 2021, two updated changed their official names for the Olympics: Swaziland changed to Eswatini, and "FYROM" (the "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia") changed to North Macedonia. More recently, Turkey changed its name to Türkiye not long after the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics (we couldn't find articles confirming the date of the change, but records show the official Olympics website switched from "Turkey" to "Türkiye" between July 7 and July 14 of 2022).
Which countries aren't in the Olympics at all?
There's only one UN-recognized independent country that's never been eligible for the Olympic Games. That's Vatican City,
the independent Catholic Church headquarters in Rome, which has never
applied to join, though it's recently started working towards that.
Banned and Suspended Countries
Besides Vatican City, UN members Russia and Belarus are also not eligible to participate in the Olympics this year. They were banned from the Games in February 2022 for violating the "Olympic Truce" - a tradition that you can't wage war on another participating country during the time period surrounding the games (Russia invaded Ukraine, with Belarus's help, between the regular Winter Olympics and the Winter Paralympics of Beijing 2022).
To avoid punishing regular people for their governments' decisions, the IOC has agreed to let holders of Russian or Belarusian passports participate at Paris 2024 as "Individual Neutral Athletes" (abbreviated AIN, based on the French version of the phrase). But they won't be allowed to join as teams or display their home countries' colors, and athletes can be banned if they "actively support the war" or are affiliated with the Russian or Belarusian militaries (though the IOC has been accused of not enforcing this consistently).
On top of this, the IOC kicked out Russia's National Olympic Committee (NOC) as a whole in October 2023, saying it had broken the rules by taking over sports organizations in the parts of Ukraine
seized by the Russian military. That means that, unlike Belarus, Russia's NOC is "no longer entitled to operate as a National Olympic Committee" and is cut off from IOC funding.
But it hasn't been permanently expelled. The official Olympics website still lists the Russian Olympic Committee
as an Olympic Nation, though under the abbreviation "ROC", because the separate participation ban doesn't allow the Olympics organizers use the name "Russia".
Guatemala's NOC was also suspended from the IOC in October 2022 for government interference, after the country's high court approved the Guatemalan government's efforts to influence how National Olympic Committee members were elected (NOCs are required to be independent organizations not managed by the government). However, the Guatemalan NOC's suspension was lifted in March 2024 after everyone agreed to install committee members elected based on IOC-approved rules.
Unrecognized NOCs
Depending on your definition of a "nation", you could list quite a few more non-Olympic Nations. For one, the ten dependent territories allowed to participate in the Olympics are only a select few, leaving most of the world's overseas dependencies without their own teams. Athletes from those territories are allowed to try out for the teams of the countries that control them, but it's usually harder for them to qualify, since they have to stand out among a much larger "nation" of athletes.
Self-proclaimed countries not recognized by the UN usually aren't admitted by the IOC either, even if they're effectively independent (though see above under "Unrecognized countries that are Olympic Nations").
The exclusion of dependent territories and self-proclaimed countries from the Olympics isn't just an academic issue. There are actually quite a few of them that really want to join. Though it can be a little hard to define who does or doesn't count, below is a rough list of which places have made credible or newsworthy attempts at IOC recognition. Most of the "nations" listed here have already created their own "National Olympic Committees" (NOCs), or similar organizations that are sometimes treated as NOCs by other sports organizations.
Somaliland (self-proclaimed country)Americas
Anguilla (UK territory)
Curaçao (country of the Netherlands)[6]
Falkland Islands (UK territory)
Greenland (associated state of Denmark)
Guadeloupe (territory of France)
Haudenosaunee (indigenous nation on territory controlled by US and Canada)
Martinique (territory of France)
Montserrat (UK territory)
Sint Maarten (country of the Netherlands)[6]
Turks & Caicos (UK territory)Asia
Kurdistan (autonomous region in Iraq)
Macau (autonomous region of China)[3]Europe
Abkhazia (self-proclaimed country)
Catalonia (region of Spain)
Faroe Islands (associated state of Denmark)[4]
Gibraltar (UK territory)
Northern Cyprus (self-proclaimed country)
South Ossetia (self-proclaimed country)Oceania
New Caledonia (territory of France) [5]
Niue (associated state of New Zealand) [5]
Norfolk Island (territory of Australia) [5]
Northern Mariana Islands (US territory) [5]
French Polynesia (territory of France) [5]
Tokelau (territory of New Zealand) [5] Wallis and Futuna (territory of France) [5]How many countries are attending the Paris 2024 Olympics?
Unlike the Winter Olympics, where attendance is optional and many tropical countries don't bother, the IOC actually has a rule now saying that all eligible countries have to send someone to the Summer Olympics. In 2022, North Korea became the first country ever to be punished for not attending.
Given all that, it should be no surprise that the Paris 2024 Olympics are expecting full attendance from all 206 member Nations except Russia and Belarus, who are currently banned (see above). And 32 people from Russia and Belarus will still be attending as "Individual Neutral Athletes", though that's less than one-tenth the number who attended the Rio 2016 games (the last Summer Olympics where Russia wasn't banned). Even North Korea, which was banned from the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, is back in action after its suspension expired at the end of that year.
Like in other recent Olympic Games, there will also be a separate Refugee Olympic Team not representing any country.
Footnotes
[1] The five associations are based closely on the world's continents, but with a few quirks: The southern Caucasus,
Israel, and eastern Turkey are part of the European association despite
traditionally being considered part of Asia; and the South American
territory of French
Guiana also falls under European jurisdiction, because it's considered
part of France and doesn't have a separate team.
[2]
"Chinese Taipei" is intended to be ambiguous, since most Taiwanese
people consider themselves to be at least culturally Chinese. However,
the use of "Taipei" is unfortunate for the two-thirds of Taiwan's people
who don't live in or near the city of Taipei. This was especially
awkward when the 2009 World Games (an Olympics-affiliated event) were
held in Kaohsiung, Taiwan - something of a rival city to Taipei.
[3]
Although Macau's NOC isn't recognized by the IOC itself, it has been
accepted as a member of its continental organization, the Olympic
Council of Asia. Macau participates in the Asian Games and Paralympic
Games, but not in the regular Olympics.
[4] The Faroe Islands participate in the Paralympics, but haven't been accepted for participation in the regular Olympics.
[5] Seven dependent territories in Oceania are associate members of the Oceania National Olympic Committees. They're allowed to participate in some regionally-organized sporting events, but not in the Olympics.
[6] Curaçao and Sint Maarten are Caribbean islands considered by Dutch law to be separate "countries" within the independent Kingdom of the Netherlands. Both were parts of the former Netherlands Antilles, which was a recognized Olympic Nation until it broke up in 2010. At the time, officials from Curaçao and other islands refused to keep participating as a united "Netherlands Antilles" team. Because the IOC no longer allows in new members that aren't independent countries, Curaçao's attempts to rejoin the Olympics have been rejected, while any attempt by Sint Maarten would certainly face the same fate. However, Curaçao is a member of international soccer association FIFA, plus several other world sporting organizations.