The 2026 Commonwealth Games will be held in Glasgow, Scotland from July 23 to August 2, 2026. Glasgow offered to host after the Australian state of Victoria withdrew due to escalating costs and budget concerns. The event in Glasgow will be sustainable with 10 sports and six Para-sports across four iconic venues.
However, the 2030 Commonwealth Games held in Ahmedabad will be more cost-efficient than previous editions. CEO of the Commonwealth Games, Katie Sadleir stated, “We will be going back up to a programme of 17 sports in Ahmedabad. And we’re currently working with the Indian Olympic Association and the Government of India to work through that programme. So, it will go back up.”
Commonwealth Sport has aimed to drastically reduce its hosting costs as part of its ‘Games Reset’ principles. Sadleir said, “60 per cent is part of our reimagined reset for the future, and it’s definitely where we’re pitching Ahmedabad. Glasgow has done a spectacular job at making a significant reduction of 60 per cent from the Birmingham Games.”
For context, the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games approximately cost £780 million, while this year’s Games are expected to cost around £160 million. Phil Batty, chief executive officer of the Glasgow 2026 Organising Company stated, “We’ve gone from what was a 780 million-pound Games in Birmingham in 2022, to a 160 million-pound Games in Glasgow in 2026.”
He also mentioned that the cost-effective model has been built around the city’s existing infrastructure and sustainability goals. “The first is we’ve designed the event to the footprint of the city. So that’s everything, from looking at the existing active transport networks, to public transport networks throughout the city, to the facilities. The second is prioritising environmental sustainability. So moving away from diesel cars to an electric fleet and an EV shuttle bus service.”
According to Sadleir the new sustainable and cost-effective model has inspired greater interest among potential hosts. “This evolution and reimagining and innovation in terms of our games was critical for us. We made a statement that we wanted to take the Commonwealth Games around the Commonwealth, not to just have it bounce back and forth between the members that could afford a very large-scale event.
What this has shown, by working with the event expertise in Glasgow, is (that) it drove a significant interest in terms of the hosting pipeline process that we went through for 2030 and 2034, which we haven’t started in 2031. But we know now that because we’ve made these changes, that hosts are saying, ‘hey, we can do this, this is doable’.”
