National Olympic Committee


A National Olympic Committee is a national constituent of the worldwide Olympic movement. Subject to the controls of the International Olympic Committee, NOCs are responsible for organizing their people's participation in the Olympic Games. They may nominate cities within their respective areas as candidates for future Olympic Games. NOCs also promote the development of athletes and training of coaches and officials at a national level within their geographies.

National Olympic Committees

As of 2020, there are 206 National Olympic Committees. These include each of the 193 member states of the United Nations, one UN observer state, one UN non-member state in free association with New Zealand and two states with limited recognition.
There are also nine dependent territories with recognized NOCs: four territories of the United States, three British Overseas Territories, one constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and one special administrative region of China.
Prior to 1996, rules for recognising dependent territories or constituent countries as separate countries within the IOC were not as strict as those within the United Nations, which allowed these territories to field teams separately from their sovereign state. Following an amendment to the Olympic Charter in 1996, NOC recognition can only be granted after recognition as an independent country by the international community. Since the rule does not apply retroactively, the dependent territories and constituent countries which were recognised before the rule change are allowed to continue sending separate teams to the Olympics, while the Faroe Islands and Macau send their own Paralympic teams.
The only states which thus qualify to participate in the future are the Vatican City, a UN observer state, and Niue, a UN non-member state in free association with New Zealand. Currently, all other remaining states are ineligible to join the IOC as they are not recognised by a majority of the United Nations member countries. Constituent countries and dependent territories such as Curaçao, the Faroe Islands, Gibraltar, Macau and New Caledonia can also no longer be recognised, so athletes from these territories can only participate in the Olympics as part of their parent nation's national team. This rule also applies to territories experiencing a change in status – the Netherlands Antilles Olympic Committee was dissolved at the 123rd IOC session in July 2011 as the Netherlands Antilles ceased to exist in 2010.
For those countries and territories that are part of the Commonwealth of Nations, their National Olympic Committees also serve as the members of the Commonwealth Games Association. They are responsible for organising and overseeing their national teams at the Commonwealth Games.

Listed NOCs

This section lists the current:
The ANOC members are eligible to enter the Olympic Games. Some National Olympic Committees who are members of a continental Olympic association but not ANOC members compete in continental-level and subregional-level tournaments. These committees, however, are not allowed to participate in the Olympic Games.
The five continental Olympic associations are:
The IOC runs the Summer Olympic Games and the Winter Olympic Games as competitions in which all IOC-recognised NOCs can participate. Each continent also runs its own championships for their members:
While not a continental union in itself, the Union of Arab National Olympic Committees organises multi-sport events between Arabic-speaking countries. All 22 National Olympic Committees that form the UANOC are also members of either the ANOCA or the OCA and are eligible to send their athletes to either the African or Asian Games. National Olympic Committees from the UANOC member countries are noted in the list below.

Africa (ANOCA)

1: National Olympic Committee is a member of the UANOC.

America (PASO)

Asia (OCA)

1: National Olympic Committee is a member of the UANOC.

2: National Olympic Committee is a member of the OCA but not an ANOC member.

3: Official name used by the IOC, ANOC and OCA for the Republic of China.

Europe (EOC)

1: Israel was a member of the OCA, but left the organisation in 1981. It joined the EOC in 1994.

Oceania (ONOC)

1: National Olympic Committee is an associate member of the ONOC but not an ANOC member.

List of NOCs by recognition date

Below is a chronological list of the 206 NOCs recognized by the International Olympic Committee, since its foundation in 1894. Many of these committees were founded many years before their official recognition, while others were immediately accepted after being founded.
Only extant states are listed. Also, the states that have changed their name at some point are listed under their current names. Former states, are not listed, only the current states derived from them: for example, the Czech Olympic Committee representing Bohemia was created and recognized in 1899. It was later transformed into the Czechoslovak Olympic Committee, and, after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, was re-recognized in 1993.
Date of recognitionNOCs
1894 France United States
1895 Australia Germany Greece Hungary
1900 Norway
1905 Denmark Great Britain
1906 Belgium
1907 Canada Finland
1909 Portugal
1910 Egypt
1911 Turkey
1912 Austria Japan Luxembourg Netherlands Serbia Spain Switzerland
1913 Sweden
1914 Romania
1915 Italy
1919 New Zealand Poland
1922 Ireland
1923 Argentina Latvia Mexico Uruguay
1924 Bulgaria Estonia Haiti Lithuania
1927 India
1929 Philippines
1934 Chile
1935 Brazil Iceland Liechtenstein Venezuela
1936 Afghanistan Bermuda Bolivia Costa Rica Jamaica Malta Peru
1937 Sri Lanka
1947 Guatemala Iran Myanmar Panama South Korea
1948 Colombia Guyana Iraq Lebanon Pakistan Puerto Rico Singapore Syria Trinidad and Tobago
1950 Thailand
1951 Hong Kong Nigeria
1952 Bahamas Ghana Indonesia Israel
1953 Monaco
1954 Cuba Dominican Republic Ethiopia Malaysia
1955 Barbados Fiji Kenya Liberia
1956 Honduras Uganda
1957 North Korea Tunisia
1959 Albania Ecuador Morocco Nicaragua San Marino Sudan Suriname
1960 Chinese Taipei
1962 Benin El Salvador Mongolia
1963 Cameroon Côte d'Ivoire Jordan Libya Mali Nepal Senegal
1964 Algeria Chad Madagascar Niger Congo Sierra Leone Zambia
1965 Central African Republic Guinea Saudi Arabia Togo
1966 Kuwait
1967 Belize Virgin Islands
1968 Democratic Republic of the Congo Gabon Malawi Tanzania
1970 Paraguay
1972 Burkina Faso Lesotho Mauritius Somalia Swaziland
1974 Papua New Guinea
1975 Andorra
1976 Antigua and Barbuda Cayman Islands Gambia
1978 Cyprus
1979 Bahrain Laos Mauritania Mozambique People's Republic of China Seychelles Vietnam
1980 Angola Bangladesh Botswana Qatar United Arab Emirates Zimbabwe
1981 Yemen
1982 British Virgin Islands Oman
1983 Bhutan Samoa Solomon Islands
1984 Brunei Djibouti Equatorial Guinea Grenada Rwanda Tonga
1985 Maldives
1986 Aruba Cook Islands Guam
1987 American Samoa Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Vanuatu
1991 Estonia Latvia Lithuania Namibia South Africa
1993 Armenia Azerbaijan Belarus Bosnia and Herzegovina Burundi Cape Verde Comoros Croatia Czech Republic Dominica Georgia Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Moldova North Macedonia Russia Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia São Tomé and Príncipe Slovakia Slovenia Tajikistan Turkmenistan Ukraine Uzbekistan
1994 Nauru
1995 Cambodia Guinea-Bissau Palestine
1997 Federated States of Micronesia
1999 Eritrea Palau
2003 Kiribati Timor-Leste
2006 Marshall Islands
2007 Montenegro Tuvalu
2014 Kosovo
2015 South Sudan

Divisions

The NOCs are all members of the Association of National Olympic Committees, which is also split among five continental associations:
See the article for each continental association for the complete lists of all NOCs.

Unrecognized National Olympic Committees

The Macau Sports and Olympic Committee was founded in 1987 and has attempted to enroll to the IOC since its foundation, but is still not officially recognized and thus no athlete has participated in the Olympic Games under the name "Macau, China". It has, however, participated in the Paralympic Games.
The Faroe Islands have a recognised National Paralympic Committee.
Other existing countries/regions with unrecognized Olympic committees: Catalonia, Gibraltar, French Polynesia, Niue, Somaliland, New Caledonia, Kurdistan, Northern Cyprus, Abkhazia, Native Americans, the Northern Mariana Islands, Anguilla, Montserrat, Transnistria and Turks & Caicos Islands.
South Ossetia intends to establish a National Olympic Committee, and representatives from the Republic of Artsakh take part in Armenia's National Olympic Committee.

Citations