The Summer Olympic Games, also known as the Summer Olympics or the Games of the Olympiad, is a major international multi-sport event normally held once every four years. The inaugural Games took place in 1896 in Athens, then part of the Kingdom of Greece, and the most recent was held in 2024 in Paris, France. This was the first international multi-sport event of its kind, organised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) founded by Pierre de Coubertin. The tradition of awarding medals began in 1904; in each Olympic event, gold medals are awarded for first place, silver medals for second place, and bronze medals for third place. The Winter Olympic Games were created out of the success of the Summer Olympic Games, which are regarded as the largest and most prestigious multi-sport international event in the world.
The Summer Olympics have increased in scope from a 42-event competition programme in 1896 with fewer than 250 male competitors from 14 nations, to 339 events in 2021 (2020 Summer Olympics) with 11,319 competitors (almost half of whom were women) from 206 nations. The Games have been held in nineteen countries over five continents: four times in the United States (1904, 1932, 1984, and 1996), three times in Great Britain (1908, 1948, and 2012) and in France (1900, 1924, and 2024), twice each in Greece (1896 and 2004), Germany (1936 and 1972), Australia (1956 and 2000), and Japan (1964 and 2020), and once each in Sweden (1912), Belgium (1920), the Netherlands (1928), Finland (1952), Italy (1960), Mexico (1968), Canada (1976), Russia (1980), South Korea (1988), Spain (1992), China (2008), and Brazil (2016).
