The tube or metro style map above shows all the host cities of the Summer Olympic Games from 1896-2020. They’ve grouped them by 4 eras: pre-World War 1, interwar years (or pre-World War 2), Post World War 2 – Cold War games and finally the Modern games.
The map itself is quite clever as the various lines intersect with cities who’ve hosted multiple times such as Athens, Paris, Los Angeles, and London’s record 3-times hosting the games.
Tokyo will be the first Asian city to host the games twice when it does so in 4 years time.
If you’re curious about the cities themselves and the years they hosted you might find the following intersting.
Pre-WW1 Summer Olympic Games Host Cities (5 games total)
- 1896 – Athens
- 1900 – Paris
- 1904 – St Louis
- 1908 – London
- 1912 – Stockholm
Interwar Summer Olympic Host Cities (5 games total)
- 1920 Antwerp
- 1924 Paris
- 1928 Amsterdam
- 1932 Los Angeles
- 1936 Berlin
The Missing Host Summer Olympic Host Cities (3 missed games)
The following 3 cities were scheduled to host the games but WW1 or WW2 got in the way.
- 1916 – Berlin
- 1940 – Tokyo
- 1944 – London
Post-WW2, Cold War Summer Olympic Host Cities (11 games total)
- 1948 – London
- 1952 – Helsinki
- 1956 – Melbourne
- 1960 – Rome
- 1964 – Tokyo
- 1968 – Mexico City
- 1972 – Munich
- 1976 – Montreal
- 1980 – Moscow
- 1984 – Los Angeles
- 1988 – Seoul
Post Cold War, Modern Summer Olympic Host Cities (7 games so far; 1 host city announced)
- 1992 – Barcelona
- 1996 – Atlanta
- 2000 – Sydney
- 2004 – Athens
- 2008 – Beijing
- 2012 – London
- 2016 – Rio
- 2020 – Tokyo
The number of Summer Olympic Games hosted by continent stands at:
- 16 in Europe
- 6 in North America
- 4 in Asia
- 2 in Australia
- 1 in South America
- 0 in Africa
- 0 in Antarctica
Finally, if you’d like to fly between each Summer Olympic host city in order, you’d rack up 140,536 miles (226,171km) or about 5.5 times around the world.
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