The essential dates
The Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games begin on Thursday 23 July and finish on Sunday 2 August. Organisers describe ten days of sporting competition across an 11-day calendar window.
For Australian viewers, the time difference means some evening sessions in Scotland will appear overnight or on the following calendar date at home. Commonwealth Games Australia's live Games hub links to the current day-by-day schedule and lists free coverage on Seven and 7plus.
The ten sports on the programme
The programme contains athletics, artistic gymnastics, 3x3 basketball, boxing, swimming, indoor bowls, judo, netball, track cycling and weightlifting. Six of those sports also contain integrated Para competition.
The paired programme includes Para athletics, 3x3 wheelchair basketball, Para swimming, Para bowls, Para track cycling and Para powerlifting. The Games list 215 medal events overall, including a record 47 Para medal events.
Four venue hubs carry the whole Games
Scotstoun Stadium hosts athletics and Para athletics. Tollcross International Swimming Centre carries swimming and Para swimming, while the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome and Arena hosts track cycling, Para track cycling and artistic gymnastics.
The Scottish Event Campus is divided across spaces. The Armadillo hosts weightlifting and Para powerlifting, the SEC Centre hosts boxing, bowls, Para bowls, judo and both forms of 3x3 basketball, and the Hydro hosts netball.
Why the programme looks smaller than Birmingham 2022
Birmingham staged 19 sports across 15 venues in 2022. Glasgow uses 10 sports across four hubs within an eight-mile corridor. The 2026 plan was deliberately built as a more compact event using established venues.
That means sports seen at recent Games, including cricket, hockey, rugby sevens and badminton, are not on the Glasgow programme. Their absence is a programme decision, not evidence that the sports have stopped being part of the wider Commonwealth movement.
What to check before planning a viewing day
Event sessions and medal times can differ from the broad Games dates. A useful plan starts with the official competition schedule, then converts the listed Glasgow time to the viewer's Australian time zone.
Australia also has a searchable team page that can be filtered by athlete and sport. That source is safer than an early squad list because withdrawals and late replacements can change who actually competes.
The simplest way to follow the Games
Choose a sport from the Australian Games hub, open its schedule, and confirm whether the session is a preliminary round or a medal event. For team sports such as netball and 3x3 basketball, progression can change which later match Australia plays.
The reliable overview is compact: 23 July to 2 August, ten sports, four Glasgow venue hubs and free Australian coverage listed through Seven and 7plus. Live schedule pages should remain the final authority for session changes.
Sources and further reading
This article was written for Curiosity Desk. We do not copy other publishers or invent quotes. If a material error is found, we correct it openly.
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