Russia announced last year that it planned to relaunch the competition first staged in 1984 as a Soviet-led alternative to the Los Angeles Olympics, which the USSR had boycotted in retaliation for a U.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has postponed the World Friendship Games, which were originally scheduled for this year, to an unspecified date in 2025. The International Olympic Committee had criticized the event as a political move in response to Russia being banned from the Paris Olympics due to its Ukraine offensive.