• Decision on 2024 and 2028 Olympics to be made in September • IOC seeks ‘tri-partite’ agreement to cover three contingencies

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The International Olympic Committee on Tuesday voted in favour of awarding hosting rights for the 2024 and 2028 Olympic Games at the same session in September, pending agreements with Paris and Los Angeles.

They are the only cities left in the race to stage the 2024 Games and the IOC will next seek a “tri-partite” agreement.

That could mean either that one city will accept the 2028 Games before the session in September or that each would be willing to accept 2028 if it is not awarded the 2024 Olympics.

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The IOC has been desperate to overhaul its bidding process after Hamburg, Rome, Budapest and Boston pulled out of the 2024 race, deterred by the size, cost and complexity of hosting the Games. The next Olympics are in Tokyo in 2020.

Should there be no three-way agreement, the vote at the session in Lima on 13 September will be a straightforward selection of only the 2024 host city.

“This [double-awarding] is a golden opportunity,” said the IOC president, Thomas Bach. “It is hard to imagine something better. This is why the IOC asked its vice presidents to study how to make the most of this unique constellation.”

The IOC’s vice president, John Coates, said there would not be a double awarding during the 2026 winter Games bid process. “We are not contemplating that this will be the normal procedure,” Coates told the IOC session.

Bach has said in the past he did not want any “losers” in the bid process, aware of the dip in popularity of the Olympic Games among major cities.

Four more had pulled out of the 2022 race two years ago while two did not even bid after plans were rejected by local referendums.

Before the vote in Lausanne on Tuesday Paris and Los Angeles presented their bids to the 83 IOC members present, with the French capital receiving a major boost from the presence of Emmanuel Macron. The president said of Paris’s failed bids in 1992, 2012 and 2016: “We don’t want to lose a fourth one.”