According to a statement from Budapest 2024 sixteen National Olympic Committees (NOC) support a resolution that Budapest is capable of hosting the 2024 Olympic Games. Representatives from those nations also claim that the city’s location at the heart of the European Central and Southern regions made it the natural choice for the NOC’s of those countries.

Following several meetings held at the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC) session in Washington last month and during the European Olympic Committee’s (EOC) General Assembly in Prague last week, Albania, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey National Olympic Committees have jointly announced their support.

The resolution was proposed by the President of the Croatian Olympic Committee and EOC Executive Board member Zlatko Matesa, ahead of the EOC General Assembly in Prague.

The total population of the Central and Southern European regions top 200 million people, which the bid committee says it makes Budapest one of the most accessible cities in Europe.

Bence Szabo, General Secretary of the Hungarian Olympic Committee said, “this announcement by my colleague Mr. Zaltko Matesa is a testament to the new rules under Agenda 2020 – Budapest is the right sized city, it is an Olympic sized city and those countries surrounding us will benefit from having a global sporting event hosted in the centre of the region. Hosting the Summer Olympic Games in 2024 would see the Games come to this region for the first time in Olympic history”.

Budapest is competing for the 2024 Games with Los Angeles, Paris, Rome and Hamburg. The host city will be selected by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in September 2017.

It is widely considered that by 2024 the Olympics will be due back in Europe after a twelve-year absence and that thinking has resulted in four of five bids originating from the region. But it will have been 28 years since the Games were held in the United States, the Olympics biggest national stakeholder, and Los Angeles is also well in contention.

Budapest has never hosted the Olympic Games and is considered a rank outsider in this race, yet is still very early in the two year campaign and Olympic bid races are typically volatile and render unexpected results.