A little bit of antiquity plus a sprinkling of advertising dollars makes for a unique history
It is almost time.
Four years have elapsed. Athletes have trained. A city has prepared. A flame has wound its way around part of the globe. Quirky traditions have been dusted off.
Have you guessed what we’re talking about yet? If you went with the Milano Cortina Olympic Games, which officially begin on Feb. 6, 2026, then you got it right! But as the official kickoff to another Winter Games looms on the horizon, you might be wondering: Why do we have to wait four full years between the Games? That is a really long time, after all!
In my lifetime, the Olympics have always run at the four-year frequency, with Summer and Winter Games staggered so that there is at least one version of the Games every two years. But it wasn’t always like this.
So when did all this start? And what’s the logic behind it? It’s … complicated. Read on to find out the details before the Olympic flame makes it to Italy during the 2026 opening ceremony.
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Why are the Olympics held every four years?
The very first Olympic Games took place in the sacred Greek city of Olympia in 776 B.C.E. Olympia held great meaning for the ancient Greeks; after all, Zeus was believed to reside there, and his primary temple was located on the site. And it was way back in those ancient times that the Games started on their four-year cycle (known as a quadrennial), until they were disbanded under Roman rule in the 4th century C.E. The four-year periods between the Games were formally known as the “Olympiad,” and time was counted using Olympiads as a form of measurement.
The reasons the Greeks settled on the four-year, quadrennial model were numerous: To name a few, it gave athletes time to prepare; it gave spectators time to make their way to Olympia; and it aligned with other religious and cultural events of the period. Pierre de Courbetin, the Parisian credited with reviving the Olympic Games, began the process of their re-creation in the 1890s, and the newly formed International Olympic Committee (IOC) met officially for the first time in 1894. The first modern-day Games were held in Athens, Greece, in 1896, and the next two Games—which took place in 1900 and 1904—were held in tandem with World’s Fairs in Paris and St. Louis, Missouri.
However, according to Bob Barney, PhD, founding director of the International Centre for Olympic Studies at Western University in Ontario, Canada, combining a World’s Fair and an Olympic Games was a huge mistake. “[The Olympics] suffered badly because of that,” he says. “There was hardly any reference to them being Olympic Games until after the fact.” Instead, they were treated like expositional extensions of the rest of the Fair, rather than as their own unique global contest. After these two failures, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) moved the Games to their own stage, unassociated with other global events. And they continued to run every four years.
In addition to being an homage to the ancient Games and giving athletes and host cities adequate time to prepare, Barney says that the use of the quadrennial model confers an additional benefit: “If [the IOC] did it more frequently, it would not give [the Games] the incentive; it would not give them the posture; it would not give them the value” that they have at their current frequency. Translation: As the old saying goes, less is more!
Why aren’t the Summer and Winter Olympics held in the same year?
The notion to separate the years of the Summer and Winter Olympic Games is a relatively recent one. The IOC made the decision to do so in 1986 at their session in Lausanne, Switzerland, in order to manage the logistical and financial costs of holding both Games in the same year. “Straddling the Games,” says Barney, also makes it easier to sell advertising for both events, a motivating factor in the IOC’s decision to separate them.
As a result, the Games were held in the same year for the final time in 1992, though the two took place in different cities at different times of the year, Summer and Winter, respectively. Barney says that although the Summer Games have historically had the higher viewership, “Winter viewership is gaining.”
The first “Winter Olympics” were held in 1924 in Chamonix, France, and they were first simply called the “International Winter Sports Week.” The IOC retroactively renamed them the “1st Olympic Winter Games” in 1926. Prior to 1924, the inclusion of winter events in the Games had a more meandering history. Scandinavian countries held their own “Nordic Games” as early as 1901, and the sports included in them prefigured the Winter Olympics. Not long after, members of the IOC began suggesting the Olympic Games should include the events under their banner—despite Scandinavian protest—and the 1920 Antwerp Games did feature figure skating and ice hockey. Germany had planned to include winter events in its 1916 Berlin Olympics, but they never took place because of World War I. All these threads culminated in the 1924 Winter Sports Week, which ultimately became the first modern Winter Olympics and changed history.
Have the Olympics ever been postponed or canceled?
The ancient Olympic Games ran continuously for four centuries, beginning in 776 B.C.E. and ending under Roman rule in the 4th century C.E. The Games then lay functionally dormant until their revival in the 1890s. The first modern Games were held in Athens in 1896.
Since that time, a few major global events have disrupted their quadrennial cycle.
- 1916: In the summer of 1912, the IOC awarded the upcoming Games to Berlin, Germany, which beat out several cities, including dazzling American industrial up-and-comer Detroit, Michigan. The Germans set to work, building a vast stadium that could seat 30,000 fans, along with other preparations. However, with the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the start of World War I in 1914, the IOC decided to withhold the Games until 1920.
- 1940: Originally scheduled to be held in Tokyo, the 1940 Olympics were reassigned to Helsinki, Finland, in 1938. Many prominent members of the international community threatened to boycott the Games if they were held in Japan, a result of Japan’s occupation of China, which had begun in 1931 and escalated with the so-called “Rape of Nanking” in 1937. Japan abruptly resigned from hosting the Games, which prompted the IOC to move them to Finland. However, the Games were canceled entirely after the onset of World War II in 1938. This came after the Finns had spent nearly $10 million in preparation for hosting.
- 1944: In 1939, the IOC made plans for the 1944 Games, awarding them to London. Three months later, however, Hitler’s Germany invaded Poland, and England and France declared war on Germany. As a result of the conflict, which began to span the globe, the IOC canceled the 1944 Games and decided to hold off on the Olympics for the duration of the war.
- 2020: The Tokyo Games were postponed for one year as the globe navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Barney, that’s the only time a delay like that has happened in the history of the Olympics, as opposed to a full-on cancellation or postponement until the next regularly scheduled Games.
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Sources:
- Bob Barney, PhD, founding director of the International Centre for Olympic Studies and professor Emeritus at the School of Kinesiology, Faculty of Health Sciences, at Western University; phone interview, Jan. 19, 2026
- The Olympic Museum: “Olympic Games in Antiquity”
- Britannica: “Why Are The Olympics Held Every Four Years?”
- Olympics.com: “When were the first Winter Games held?”
- Olympics.com: “When were the first Olympic Winter Games held?”
- Olympics.com: “The End of the Ancient Games”
- Olympics.com: “The modern Olympic Games caught in the upheavals of history”
- The National WWII Museum: “The ‘Lost Olympics’ of 1940 and 1944”
