2024 Paris Olympics: Opening ceremony set to formally start the Games, rail network sabotaged

The Paris Olympics come 100 years after the Games were first held in the city. Some of the milestones of 1924 still resonate today, along with the Olympic spirit. NBC News’ Keir Simmons looks at the parallels and what has changed.

The Paris opening ceremony is the first one open to the public (and the first one not in a stadium), and it is expected to draw the biggest crowd ever, with a mix of Parisians and tourists joining in on the celebrations. 

Almost 100 boats carrying about 10,500 Olympic athletes will float down the Seine as the opening ceremony takes shape in Paris today. Nearly 600,000 spectators will be there, as well. They claimed 222,000 free tickets to watch the procession from the Seine’s upper banks, and an additional 104,000 tickets were sold for a fee to watch lower down. 

Decks along the route will have cameras so onlookers can catch the athletes’ faces up close as they inch closer to the Olympic Games. Eighty screens will be set up around the city so those without tickets can still get front-row seats. 

In addition, 1.5 billion people around the world are expected to tune in to the broadcast version of the ceremony from home. 

It has been a century since the city of light last hosted the Games. Watch how Paris officials prepared for this year’s opening ceremony.

Even though swimming in the Seine has been banned for more than 100 years, the Paris Games spent $1.5 billion to clean it up and use it for the Olympics. It was also an effort to ensure Parisians will have a cleaner river after the Games. 

As recently as early June, the Seine wasn’t Olympics-ready: Water tests returned results that showed an unsafe level of E. coli. Readings since then have shown improvement. On July 17, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo got in the Seine, declaring the famed river clean enough for Olympic swimmers who will compete in the waterway.

“The water is wonderful,” Hidalgo told NBC News after she emerged from the water, adding that it was “very cool and very nice.”

Hours before the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics on Friday, part of France’s high-speed rail network was paralyzed by “malicious acts” that disrupted service, officials in the country said.

“Coordinated malicious acts targeted several TGV lines last night and will seriously disrupt traffic until this weekend,” French Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete said in a post on X on Friday morning.

“I strongly condemn these criminal actions which will compromise the departures on vacation of many French people,” he said.

It was unclear who might be responsible for the attacks. France’s national rail operator SNCF said it was working to restore service following the incident.

Read the full story here.

This year’s opening ceremony is poised to be the most ambitious in Olympic history as the Parade of Nations moves from land to water.

Over 10,000 athletes will sail down the “main artery” of Paris, the Seine River, and make their grand entrance to the Olympic Games via boat. Typically, the parade involves processing into a stadium, nation by nation, but the French organizers had something even grander in mind.

“An opening ceremony has never been held outside of a stadium,” opening ceremony artistic director Thomas Jolly told The Associated Press. “There is no model; it’s absolute creation.”

The ceremony will begin at the Austerlitz Bridge and travel just under four miles down the river, landing at the Trocadéro near the Eiffel Tower. Along the way, the athletes will pass the city’s most prominent icons, including the Louvre and the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral.

The ceremony will be available to watch on NBC, Peacock and the NBC and NBC Olympics apps. 

It will air live on NBC and Peacock at 1:30 p.m. ET and again during prime time, starting at 7:30 p.m. ET.

The opening ceremony, which is expected to last four-and-a-half hours, will begin at 1:30 p.m. ET/10:30 a.m. PT. NBC will air a preview show beginning at noon ET/9 a.m. PT. 

The NBC News live blogging team will also be reporting updates here all day, so be sure to hit refresh on this page.