The Inquiry · BBC World Service

Is it time to scrap the Commonwealth Games?

April 7, 2026·24 min·1 clip

Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews declared '$6-7 billion for a 12-day event — that is all cost and no benefit' before paying $400 million in penalties.

The baton comes first. It leaves Buckingham Palace with bagpipes behind it, starting the countdown to the 2026 Commonwealth Games and giving the programme its big question. There is relief in the story too. Glasgow is due to host for the second time in 12 years because Australia's Victoria state, the original winning bidder, stepped back after costs climbed fast. That is the practical problem. The bigger one is whether the Games still have a job to do in the 21st century. History makes that harder to answer. An expert describes the early British Empire Games as an event that encouraged territorial identity, unlike the Olympic movement, which discouraged nationalism and territorial identity. Participation was never neat. Some nations and territories did not simply use the Games to show loyalty to British rule. They used them to work out how they wanted to be seen. Britishness still mattered in some places. The excerpt points to Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands as examples where post-war participation could carry that meaning. Then the name changed. After several versions, the event became the Commonwealth Games in 1978, but the politics stayed. South Africa makes the point bluntly. From 1948 to 1994, apartheid laws and sports regulations barred mixed-race teams and allowed only white athletes to represent South Africa internationally. Rhodesia adds another hard edge. The programme says what was then called Rhodesia severely restricted black athletes' participation until Zimbabwe was founded in 1980. By then, the fixture was not just a fixture. As the expert argues, a newly independent Nigeria facing South Africa would be facing an all-white side required by South African law.

As heard by us

A sharp current-affairs look at why the Commonwealth Games now have to justify their cost, identity, and political legitimacy.

The Inquiry treats the Commonwealth Games as a political institution under pressure, not just a sporting fixture with a budget problem. Tanya Beckett opens with Glasgow 2026 and the awkward fact that Victoria, Australia, walked away after rapidly escalating costs, leaving the…

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Why you'd press play

You want the Commonwealth Games' future weighed against the costs and history beneath them, not just the headlines.

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