Dakar 2026: The four sports making their Youth Olympic Games debut

Four sports will make their Youth Olympic Games [YOG] debut at Dakar 2026, including baseball5, skateboarding, surfing, and wushu.

These additions are designed to increase the participation of African youth in sport, and to achieve gender equality in each sport and event for the first time.

The Buenos Aires 2018 YOG achieved gender equality overall, but with varying amounts of men and women in the different events.

Dakar 2026 will feature 35 sports overall with the new additions replacing roller sports and trampoline gymnastics.

Other changes within existing disciplines for the first African YOG see beach wrestling replacing Greco-Roman, and the introduction of beach canoe sprint. Sport climbing will switch from a combined-discipline event to bouldering only, while the cycling format will switch from four team events to individual competitions in BMX freestyle, the road race, and individual time trial.

In the run up to Dakar 2026, we take a closer look at the four sports making their Youth Olympic Games debut. Below, you can get a taste of what is to come in a video created ahead of the original date of the event, 2022, before the pandemic forced it to be postponed.

Baseball5

Baseball5 is a five-on-five, five-inning street version of baseball and softball.

It’s also pitcher-free, and requires only a rubber ball to play and competitors use their hand instead of a bat.

Innovation and accessibility are at the heart of baseball5's inclusion, and its basic requirements mean that it’s fast, furious, and can be played anywhere.

In April 2022, the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) conducted a week-long Baseball5 workshop in Senegal, introducing players from the National Olympic Committees of Africa (ANOCA) to the rules, training sessions, and games.

The new format will first be seen competitively at the inaugural Baseball5 World Cup, 7-13 November in El Zócalo, Mexico City, before appearing at the 2023 African Beach Games in Tunisia.

Skateboarding

Skateboarding was a huge hit on its Olympic debut at Tokyo 2020, full of gravity-defying tricks and amazing kits.

However, Africa's only competitors in Japan were limited to three South African skaters.

As an easily accessible sport that can be enjoyed in urban environments, it was the perfect addition to the Dakar 2026 programme, which aims to promote African youth participation across the different Olympic disciplines.

Skateboarding will feature 12 men and 12 women competing in the park discipline at the Complexe Tour de l’Oeuf venue.

Athletes will compete on a course that resembles a fishbowl, and their tricks within a 45-second period are judged by a panel of judges.

Surfing

Surfing is another sport that made its Olympic debut at Tokyo 2020.

It proved particularly representative, with medallists coming from five different continents including women’s silver medallist Bianca Buitendag of South Africa.

The action in Dakar will take place in the coastal city of Saly, where there will be one rider per wave.

A panel of judges will determine each surfer’s performance from wave to wave, scoring from one to ten based on the difficulty of manoeuvres performed.

Senegal will be keen to unearth the next Cherif Fall, who is on a mission to become his nation’s first Olympic surfing representative at Paris 2024.

Wushu

Wushu is a combat sport that first appeared at the Olympics as an exhibition event at the Beijing 2008 Olympics and the Nanjing 2014 YOG.

The sport, which was created to standardise the practice of traditional Chinese martial arts, enjoys over 120 million practitioners worldwide.

There will be 48 athletes participating in four events in Dakar, including the men’s and women’s Changquan and men’s and women’s Taijiquan.

Changquan involves long-range extended techniques that focus more on speed and flexibility, while Taijiquan is the practice of controlled breathing, coupled with slower, technical movements.