Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games: Senegal enters 136 athletes in 23 disciplines, including 69 girls

Senegal will field 136 athletes, including 69 girls and 67 boys, at the Dakar Youth Olympic Games, which open on October 31, 2026, and conclude on November 13. The list, published by the Senegalese National Olympic and Sports Committee, enters the host country in 23 of the 25 sports on the program, according to PressAfrik.

It is a team where girls are in the majority, on a continent where access for young women to competitive sports remains a daily struggle. The mission entrusted to this delegation is to "bring back the maximum number of medals to the country," reports the same media outlet, without specifying a numerical target.

Eight disciplines discovered all at once

For the first time in its Olympic history, Senegal will present athletes in rugby sevens, beach handball, futsal (girls and boys), baseball5, beach wrestling, 3x3 basketball, beach volleyball, and wushu. Six of these eight new additions are team sports: hosting the Games forced the country to build teams where it previously had none.

Rugby sevens provides the largest contingent with 24 athletes, twelve boys and twelve girls, ahead of futsal and beach handball, with twenty each, according to the Senegalese Press Agency (APS). The other participants will compete in fencing, swimming, taekwondo, dance, boxing, athletics, rowing, gymnastics, table tennis, equestrianism, judo, triathlon, badminton, sailing, and cycling.

A base camp far from the Olympic village

On October 22, 2026, "Team Senegal" left the Léopold-Sédar-Senghor stadium to settle at the Guéréo sports complex, about fifteen kilometers from Popenguine, in the Thiès region, rather than at the Olympic village set up on the Amadou-Makhtar-Mbow University campus. The site has about twenty rooms, a natural grass pitch, classrooms, a weight room, and football and basketball courts, specifies the APS.

The continent awaits nearly 2,700 young people

These Games are the first of an Olympic nature to be organized on African soil. Approximately 2,700 athletes aged 17 and under, with strict parity between girls and boys, are expected from more than 200 national Olympic committees and a refugee team, across eight sites spread between Dakar, Diamniadio, and Saly.

Surrounding the competition, the organizing committee announces approximately 900,000 tickets, a third of which are distributed through solidarity mechanisms, nearly 23,000 volunteer applications for about 6,000 positions, and some 300,000 young Senegalese involved via schools and neighborhoods, according to the International Olympic Committee. The flame, lit in Athens on September 10, 2026, and arrived in Dakar two days later, traveled across the country in thirty stages.

The opening ceremony is set for October 31, 2026.