Paris 2024 Olympic Games: How to prepare for your trip

Paris is preparing to host the world’s most prestigious sporting events: the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Sports enthusiasts and curious people from all over the world look forward to this not-to-be-missed event. But how do you get tickets to the world’s biggest competitions? And where to sleep? With just over a year to go to the opening ceremony, almost 70% of tickets for the Paris Olympic Games have already been sold.

Milesopedia answers your questions and helps you unravel the details so that you too can take part in the Paris Olympics, which run from July 26 to August 11, 2024.

The official Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games box office is the sole sales channel for tickets. No other sales platform is authorized to market tickets. To guarantee your participation in this internationally renowned sporting event, we strongly recommend that you visit the official ticketing website. The Olympic Games state that no refunds will be made in the event of fraud, and that all tickets will be nominative. The names of ticket owners must be provided by the purchaser prior to the competition.

The first two phases of ticket sales for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games have already taken place and are now over, but don’t worry, as there will be further buying opportunities between now and 2024. The resale platform will open in spring 2024.

But there’s already an important date in your diaries: tickets for the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games go on sale on October 9, 2023.

Of course, ticket prices vary according to the category of seats selected, the sport, and whether the event is a competition day or includes medal sessions.

In all, six different categories are on offer. The First category gives access to a privileged seat in a loge or lounge, as well as a catering area for a fee. Categories A, B, C, D and E offer seating and standing room in the grandstand. A maximum of six tickets can be purchased per session, with the exception of specific sessions limited to a maximum of four tickets.

For a category D seat in the qualifiers, prices can be as low as 24 euros per ticket. These include athletics, badminton, basketball, boxing, cycling and more. But rates are rising fast. Seats for the category A tennis final are priced at 420 euros, while seats for the artistic gymnastics final are priced at 690 euros. Seats for the athletics final are priced at 980 euros. To attend the badminton final in First, the curious will have to pay 320 euros, while to attend the boxing final in First, they will have to pay 520 euros.

The full price list – which is provided for information only – is available on the Paris Olympic Games website.

To pay for your purchases at the event, you’ll need a VISA credit card. Already, we’ve seen that only Visa credit cards are accepted by the Paris 2024 Olympic Games Official Store. Which is an indication that the same will be true on site at the event.

For Canadians, a very interesting option is the Scotiabank Passport™ Visa Infinite* Card. Not only is this a VISA credit card, it’s also the only VISA credit card in Canada to charge no conversion fees for foreign currency transactions.

So when you make purchases in euros in France, you won’t be charged the 2.5% conversion fee that most other credit cards charge their customers.

What’s more, this credit card gives you 6 free annual accesses to airport VIP lounges. For example, you can access the Air France KLM Lounge at Montréal-Trudeau airport or the National Bank Lounge before your flight to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games!

The Paris Olympic Games (OG) will not be limited to the capital and its immediate surroundings, but will cover the whole of France and its overseas territories. In fact, for the first time in the history of the Olympic Games, the French overseas territories will be honored with the Teahupo’o site in Tahiti, where the Olympic surfing competition will be held on some of the world’s most beautiful waves.

In Paris, 15 Olympic and 11 Paralympic venues have been carefully selected to provide an unforgettable experience for athletes, spectators and millions of television viewers around the world. Located within a 10-kilometer radius of the Olympic Village, these venues will host 21 of the 32 Olympic sports and 14 of the 22 Paralympic sports.

Île-de-France is also in the spotlight, with competition sites spread across several departments. The Games will be held in Yvelines, Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-et-Marne and Seine-Saint-Denis, where the Olympic Village will be located. Construction of the Village began in 2021 and will be completed in March 2024. It will house 14,500 athletes during the Olympic Games, and 9,000 athletes during the Paralympic Games.

Elsewhere in the country, several cities will be hosting different tournaments. Soccer matches will be held in Bordeaux, Nantes, Lyon, Saint-Étienne, Nice and Marseille.

The final stages of the men’s and women’s handball tournaments and the qualifying rounds of the basketball tournaments will be held in Lille, at the Pierre Mauroy stadium. As for sailing, it will be based in Marseille, in the Mediterranean.

Here is the map of the Olympic venues for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games:

Here is the map of the Paralympic venues for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games:

Here is the map of the Paris 2024 Olympic Marathon:

The decision to attend the Paris Olympic Games should not be taken at the last minute. Early planning is essential. Booking your plane and train tickets in advance of the event will enable you to benefit from lower fares. As airlines generally open ticket sales a year before the travel date, it may be worthwhile to start planning your trip as early as autumn.

France’s busiest (and best-connected) airports are Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Paris-Orly, Nice-Côte d’Azur, Lyon-Saint-Exupéry, Marseille-Provence, Toulouse-Blagnac, Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg, Bordeaux-Mérignac and Nantes-Atlantique. From Montreal, direct flights are available to Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille, Nantes, Nice and Paris.

If you need to board a long-haul plane to reach France, the natural choice will be with Air France, which will be the official carrier of Paris 2024.

On the other hand, it can also be advantageous to choose to land at a European airport rather than a French one. As air tickets to France are likely to be sold at dizzying prices before and during the 2024 Olympic Games, you could save money by selecting flights to some of Europe’s leading cities not far from France’s borders, such as Brussels, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Milan and Frankfurt am Main.

Air Canada offers several direct flights a week between Montreal and Brussels, Barcelona, Milan and Frankfurt am Main, while Air Transat operates direct flights between Montreal and Amsterdam and Barcelona. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Air France’s sister airline, also offers direct flights between Montreal and Amsterdam, and Lufthansa offers direct flights between Montreal and Munich and Frankfurt am Main.

To date, SNCF – the French rail group and official supporter of the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games – has not released any information on timetables as well as fares offered for train travel during the Paris Olympics.

Nevertheless, it has been said that 15,000 trains will be operated daily between July 26 and August 11, 2024 so that 10 million passengers can travel each day. The railroad company is said to have presented a series of measures to railroad workers, asking them to postpone their summer vacations and be available for the duration of the competition, in order to facilitate travel within France.

To attend the Paris Olympics, travelers from Canada will need an electronic travel authorization. As of November 2023, all adult travelers wishing to visit any European Union (EU) country, including France, for a stay of less than 90 days will be required to have the European Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIAS).

To obtain this visa waiver, which is valid for three years, individuals must pay €7, or nearly $10 CAD. They will then be able to travel within the Schengen area, entering and exiting the countries as long as the travel authorization is valid.

As Airbnb has been a partner of the Olympic and Paralympic Games since 2019, the booking platform is pulling out all the stops to promote Parisian apartment rentals during the Paris Olympics. But higher demand does not mean lower prices.

On the Airbnb website, over 1,000 Parisian owners have already opened their rental calendar for the Olympic Games, sometimes multiplying rates by three.

Check out our guide to saving money on Airbnb (for Canadians). You’ll learn, for example, that you can use Scotiabank Passport™ Visa Infinite* Card Scene+ points for all your travel purchases, including Airbnb bookings. Enough to lower your accommodation bill during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

To save money, you may want to look into hotels. For example, you could pay for a hotel stay using points earned with your American Express card.

The American Express loyalty program, Membership Rewards in Canada and Membership Rewards in France and the United States, allows you to transfer points earned with your credit card to the Hilton Honors and Marriott Bonvoy loyalty programs.

In France, the hotels participating in the Marriott Bonvoy program located near the Olympic Games venues are as follows (click on the links to read our photo reports or visit the hotel website):

And participating Hilton Honors hotels located near Olympic venues include:

Of course, Accor – ALL loyalty program – is also an official partner of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, but the French hotel group plans to roll out the partnership by offering a booking platform to serve all accredited guests, as well as service management within the Olympic and Media Villages.

The Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games promise to be an unforgettable spectacle, showcasing the talent, effort and determination of athletes from around the world.

Whether you’re a sports enthusiast or simply looking for a unique experience, don’t miss this exceptional opportunity to experience the excitement of the Games all over France.

But as tickets are selling fast and France prepares to welcome travelers from all over the world, don’t forget to plan ahead. The earlier you book, the more you save.

Find all our guides to prepare your trip to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games :