At One Place

When were the Olympic Games last cancelled?

When were the Olympic Games last cancelled?
1944
The 1944 Summer Games, awarded to London and never held

Games were cancelled in 1916, 1940 and 1944, all for war, and the numbering continued through them — so the 1948 London Games were the Games of the XIV Olympiad even though only thirteen had been held. Tokyo 2020 was postponed rather than cancelled and kept its name, which is why the 2021 event was branded 2020 throughout.

What
The 1944 Summer Games, awarded to London and never held
When
1944
Category
Everyday things
Could this change?
Not in any foreseeable way. The event is closed.

Everyday things

Question When
When did the London Underground last gain a line? 24 May 2022
When did the tallest building in the world last change? 2010
When did the prime meridian last move? 1984
When did the Olympics last award medals for art? 1948
When was a leap year last skipped? 1900
When was a letter last added to the English alphabet? The 1500s and 1600s

This page gives a date and never a "years ago". These pages are built as static files, so a computed interval would freeze at build time and quietly become wrong — which on a reference site is worse than making the reader do the subtraction.

Common questions

When were the Olympic Games last cancelled?
1944 — The 1944 Summer Games, awarded to London and never held.
What happened?
Games were cancelled in 1916, 1940 and 1944, all for war, and the numbering continued through them — so the 1948 London Games were the Games of the XIV Olympiad even though only thirteen had been held. Tokyo 2020 was postponed rather than cancelled and kept its name, which is why the 2021 event was branded 2020 throughout.

Related pages

Sources

  1. Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)

How these figures are compiled and checked