Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony: Live Updates (2024)

The Paris Olympics opening ceremony has it all, and people are... processing.

The ceremony, billed as one of the most ambitious ever, featured a parade of boats along the Seine, with a series of fun and quirky shows along the banks as well as some prerecorded segments. It replaced the typical format of a parade of nations inside a stadium.

Athletes, some wearing ponchos over their uniforms, kept their spirits high despite rainy weather, waving from their boats.

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Power ballad icon Celine Dion closed out the ceremonies from high up on the Eiffel Tower with a moving performance of Edith Piaf's "Hymne A L'Amour."

Dion announced in late 2022 that she’d been diagnosed with a rare neurological disease and has since limited her public appearances. This was her first performance since the diagnosis.

NBC commentator Kelly Clarkson noted on the broadcast she had been moved to tears by the performance.

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Nadal, Williams, Lewis and Comaneci handed the Olympic torch off to French tennis legend Amélie Mauresmo, who ran with it to the Louvre, where she handed it off to French-American basketball star Tony Parker. The two continued the run through Paris, picking up multiple famous athletes along the way and letting each of them carry the torch, including the oldest living French Olympian, 100-year-old cyclist Charles Coste.

The final handoff went to French track star Marie Jose-Perec and French judo athlete Teddy Riner in the Tuileries garden. They lit the hot air balloon cauldron before it floated up into the sky.

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Spanish tennis legend Rafael Nadal took the torch form Zinedine Zidane, suggesting to viewers that he’d be the one to light to Olympic Cauldron – one of the greatest honors of the games. But then, he boarded a boat with three other Olympic greats: Americans Serena Williams and Carl Lewis and Romanian Nadia Comaneci, who all took turns holding the torch as the bot moved down the river.

It remains to be seen who will light the Cauldron.

The opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics on Friday featured a famous trio in French lore ― and we’re not talking about the three musketeers.

The festivities aired on NBC featured a prerecorded segment in which three attractive young people begin to engage in a ménage à trois. Sacrebleu you say? Hey, it’s France! And like one viewer said: “I’m here for it, not gonna lie.”

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A stunning, mechanical horse and rider dressed like Joan of Arc carried in the white flag of the International Olympic Committee across the Seine.

The horse appeared to be galloping, holding up a rider clad in armor that is the work of French designer Jeanne Friot, according to The New York Times.

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Team France, the games’ host nation, has tied up the parade of boats.

The host country, which always enters last, was seen soaking in the evening’s festivities amid waving flags and water shooting off around them in the water.

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Team Ukraine made its appearance down the Seine, carrying the smallest number of athletes in its history of participation in the Summer Games.

Ukraine, which has been locked in war with Russia, has 140 competitors in 26 spots.

No Russian official representing Putin’s government was invited, due to the ongoing war.

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French designers sparkled in a catwalk stretching across the Seine.

Models danced and strutted across the Passerelle Debilly (Debilly Footbridge) in the rain as French DJ-producer Barbara Butch spun a set. The models included Italian Paralympic fencer Bebe Vio.

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New York-based fashion brand Ralph Lauren is once again the stylist behind Team USA’s outfits, making the ninth time the company has served as an official Olympic outfitter for Team USA.

The outfits, which are made in American factories, feature a "classic tailored single-breasted wool blazer with red and white tipping and a striped oxford shirt, unexpectedly paired with a tapered jean and a classic suede buck shoe," the company said back in June.

Ralph Lauren styled the team’s closing ceremony parade uniforms as well.

Two countries will be absent from the Opening Ceremonies: Russia and Belarus.

Because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Belarus’ involvement in the conflict, the IOC has banned athletes with Russian or Belarusian passports from competing in the Paris Olympics under the flags of their countries. While athletes from those countries can still compete as “individual neutral athletes,” they may only do so if they refrain from displaying any outward support for Russia or Belarus.

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An elaborate video showing the minion characters bumbling around inside an underwater submarine appears to give a nod to its creators’ Parisian studio.

Illumination Studios is a French animated feature production company whose films include the Despicable Me franchise. It’s also a division of Universal Pictures, which is a unit of NBCUniversal. Its NBC brand has been providing exclusive American broadcasting coverage of the Olympics.

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Shortly after her surprise performance at the Opening Ceremonies, Lady Gaga shared some of the details that went into her performance, including the special place where she got those pink feather pom poms.

“Although I am not a French artist, I have always felt a very special connection with French people and singing French music,” she said on social media.

“We rented pom poms from Le Lido archive — a real French cabaret theater,” she explained. “We collaborated with Dior to create custom costumes, using naturally molted feathers.”

She added that she ”studied French choreography that put a modern twist on a French classic” – the Zizi Jeanmaire song “Mon Truc en Plumes,” or “My Thing with Feathers” in English.

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It’s raining at the Opening Ceremonies, and more precipitation is expected in Paris tomorrow, which has outdoor sports like rowing and dressage on the schedule.

But expect a reprieve from the wet weather in the following days when weather should soar into the low 90s. Rain may return midweek, even possibly bringing thunderstorms Wednesday.

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French-Malian singer Aya Nakamura put on a dazzling show, giving an all-gold dance performance on the Pont des Arts, a bridge that connects the Institut de France to the Louvre Museum.

Nakamura, who’s a superstar in Europe with 25 top 10 singles in France, was joined by the French Republican Guard’s military band and 36 choristers from the French Army.

The bridge was a symbol of a link between the academic world and the arts, according to the Olympics website.

The boat parade has paused to showcase performances along the Seine. They’re playing heavily with French tropes.

In one performance, a ballet dancer performed on a Parisian rooftop.

In another, a rendition of “Can You Hear The People Sing” from the musical "Les Misérables," which depicts the French Revolution, transitioned into a performance from French heavy metal band Gojira, who played amid flames and headless female mannequins in an apparent reference to Marie Antoinette. French-Swiss opera singer Marina Viotti then performed a portion of "Habanera" from "Carmen,” which was written by the French composer Georges Bizet.

Olympic champion gymnast Simone Biles is not at the opening ceremony and is instead resting up ahead of her first performance, her family said.

“The first competition is Sunday, which is the women's qualifier, and so that's, and of course she needs to rest up before that competition,” her mother, Nellie Biles, said in an interview from Paris with NBC’s Hoda Kota and Snoop Dogg.

"She is feeling really good," she added. "I spoke to her this morning and she's feeling great."

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No new delegations are being introduced on the Seine as video coverage breaks away for musical and dance performances, according to a blog post on the official Olympics website.

“No delegations are being introduced at this point in the ceremony. Unlike at past Games where the Opening Ceremony has been held in a stadium, this year, the Parade of Nations is being staggered throughout the duration of the ceremony,” the post read.

As the boats carrying the Olympic athletes proceed down the Seine, they’ll glide past the iconic Notre Dame cathedral, which was the site of a devastating fire in April 2019. Over the last five years, crews have worked to restore the historic site, including rebuilding the spire. The cathedral is set to reopen to the public this December.

The ceremony highlighted these efforts by showing “construction workers” dancing at the reconstruction site.

They also rang the cathedral's bells for the first time since the fire.

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Zinedine Zidane took off with the torch, running through Paris in a video launching the opening ceremony.

Zidane, popularly known as Zizou, was filmed taking the torch from French-Moroccan actor and comedian Jamel Debbouze in an empty stadium before dashing through the streets -- and over tables. He then passed it to some children from a stalled train. Trains across France have coincidentally been delayed throughout the day due to arson attacks.

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We still don’t know who will light the Olympic Cauldron – one of the games’ highest honors – but some have speculated it could be Zinedine Zidane, the French soccer star, or Marie-José Pérec, a French track and field star. Non-athlete possibilities include French President Emmanuel Macron or survivors of the 2015 terrorist attack in Paris.

There is sometimes extra fanfare with the cauldron lighting. At the 1992 games in Barcelona, Paralympic archer Antonio Rebollo lit it by shooting a burning arrow over it, igniting gas rising from the cauldron. At the 1994 games in Lillehammer, Stein Gruben skied down a ramp and flew through the air with the flame.

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Spectators eagerly awaiting the opening ceremony along the Seine have been taking cover under umbrellas and ponchos amid a mix of heavy and light rain throughout the day.

France’s meteorological office had warned of potential flooding in Paris ahead of the opening ceremony while predicting that that the rain will be continuous until the middle of the night.

Temperatures are meanwhile hovering around 70-degrees Fahrenheit.

Tongan athlete Pita Taufatofua, a fan favorite in previous Olympics opening ceremonies, joked on Instagram that he “couldn’t bring the oil” this year because he was part of the Olympic torch relay.

He recently shared that he didn’t qualify to compete at this year’s Games, but “while not competing, the spirit of the Games called me, opportunities arose and I couldnt say no.”

The taekwondo star, who has also competed in cross-country skiing in the Winter Olympics, has been a beloved opening ceremony staple since his first oiled up, bare-chested appearance in 2016.

Two German athletes in showjumping will miss the opening ceremonies due to lengthy train delays, the Associated Press reported citing German news agency dpa.

“It’s a real shame, but we would have arrived too late,” Philipp Weishaupt said of himself and Christian Kukuk. “There was no longer a chance of making it on time.”

Kukuk made his Olympic debut in Tokyo in 2020 but missed advancing to the individual final by one place. Weishaupt was set to complete in the 2012 Olympics in London but had to bow out after his horse suffered an injury, according to reports at the time.

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Today marks the first time in Olympics history that the opening ceremony will not take place inside an arena, but rather down Paris’ legendary River Seine – a path marked with some of France’s most famous landmarks.

The parade of boats will take off from Pont d'Austerlitz, a bridge near the Jardin des Plantes, the city’s botanical garden. Around 100 boats will take the athletes past several famous sites along the Seine, including the Notre Dame, the Louvre, Musée d’Orsay, before finishing at Pont d'Iéna, a bridge right by the Eiffel Tower.

Le Monde, the daily French newspaper with an English edition, has an interactive map that’s worth checking out.

Coordinated early morning attacks on France’s high-speed rail network continue to cause transportation delays ahead of the Olympics opening ceremony, with one out of four Eurostar trains canceled through the weekend, the train service said.

Fires set in remote locations, far from the capital where the ceremony is preparing to take place, were apparently started in a bid to cut off rail routes into the city from all directions, The Associated Press reported.

There was no immediate sign that the arson attacks, which is estimated to have snarled travel for some 800,000 people across Europe, is directly linked to the Olympics, government officials said.

Snoop Dogg marked the start of the Paris Games by taking a stroll with a large, burning, conical item — the Olympic torch, of course.

The “Gin and Juice” rapper on Friday carried the flame in the final stretches of its journey, in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis, marking the commencement of the Olympic Games in the French capital.

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Team USA’s female Olympic gymnasts appear ready to rock Paris 2024.

Simone Biles and her teammates were filmed practicing at the Bercy Arena on Thursday and they gave a sneak peek at some of the stunning and exquisite moves that may end up in their competitive routines.

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On the heels of low ratings for the coronavirus pandemic-marred Tokyo and Beijing Olympics, Paris may not do much better among U.S. viewers, a poll from Gallup released Thursday found.

Simone Biles and women’s gymnastics are poised to be a bright spot, with those surveyed selecting it as their most anticipated sport

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