IN just over six months’ time, the Commonwealth Games will arrive back in Glasgow just 12 years after it last hosted it – and it will be a pivotal moment for the competition's future.
It was not lost on some that, amid a huge struggle to find a host after the Australian state of Victoria pulled out, a sporting spectacle that was born out of colonialism was saved from imminent extinction by the second city of the Empire.
It will be the third time the UK has hosted the Games in the last quarter of a century, while no African nation has ever played host.
This has all led to a number of questions: Is the Commonwealth Games relevant anymore? Does it matter to Britain more than anyone else? If it is going to continue, what does it mean in this day and age?
Speaking exclusively to The National, Phil Batty, the chief executive of Glasgow 2026, said he wants this edition of the Games to help answer some of these questions.
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“What I hope is that 2026 is a moment where we draw a line under the question of ‘is this relevant?’” he said.
“If it wasn’t relevant and it wasn’t wanted by the Commonwealth, there wouldn’t have been this moment where 74 nations got in a room in 2023 in Singapore and said ‘this must live on’.”
The Commonwealth Sport General Assembly brought together leadership from the competing nations to plan for the future after Victoria’s withdrawal. Commonwealth Sport president Donald Rukare said the movement had been on the verge of “collapse” until Glasgow stepped up in 2024.
We now know India will also host the centenary Games in 2030, with several more sports than are taking place in Glasgow, while Nigeria is being considered as the first ever African host for 2034.
There is clearly plenty of will to keep the Games going, and the Commonwealth appears to remain a relevant institution – given Gabon and Togo joined in 2022 despite having no historic ties to Britain as former French colonies.
But Batty is clear that Glasgow has a responsibility to “front up to its past” and show the way forward for a movement intrinsically linked with historical injustice.
“It’s really important when you’re looking at the Commonwealth Games to understand the connection between all 74 nations,” he said.
“It is six regions of the Commonwealth that have chosen to stay together, born out of history of Empire, but actually what we look at when we think about the Commonwealth now is, what impact can those nations have when they work together on sustainable development goals? Areas like sporting access for all and diplomacy? That is really one of the galvanising forces of the Commonwealth Games.
“It uses sport but it’s not shying away from talking about social injustice, historical inequality, decolonisation, the identity of individual nations and the history those nations have had and how much change there has been in the 96 years the Games has been around.
“It’s an important global spotlight, it brings everyone together to have open and honest conversations in a space that uses the convening power of sport to make sure that conversation is equitable.
“It’s not a host nation talking to 73 other nations, it’s 74 nations in one place having a shared conversation.”
So how does Glasgow plan to acknowledge its historical role in the British Empire and show why this movement rooted in colonialism continues to exist?
Having led the opening and closing ceremonies at Birmingham 2022 – which addressed the legacy of the slave trade and confronted homophobia still present in many Commonwealth countries – Batty said he would like to see Glasgow’s opening ceremony do similar.
“I was lucky enough to lead the opening ceremony for Birmingham and it was really important that in those focal moments where you have the world’s media that you don’t shy away from a story of a place – and I hope you feel the story we told about Birmingham and the West Midlands we didn’t shy away from those slavery connections,” he said.
“I would want to see that again in Glasgow’s ceremony.”
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In Birmingham, diver Tom Daley made a powerful statement for LGBT+ rights by carrying the Queen’s Baton into the opening ceremony surrounded by activists holding the Progress Pride Flag. His documentary Illegal To Be Me also highlighted the dangers faced by LGBT+ people in over half the Commonwealth countries where homosexuality is criminalised.
Glasgow 2026 has announced the launch of a £250,000 Festival Fund for community groups and individuals to come up with projects that, alongside the themes of gathering and celebration, focus on social justice and acknowledge the “complex historic and contemporary relationships of the Commonwealth and exploring routes to a just future”.
Batty said he would be looking for projects that come from a place of “lived experience”.
“If you are telling a story about a nation’s past, [we will be wanting to ensure] your group has individuals of that heritage within the group shaping it,” he said.
“But equally importantly is that you are creating space for the widest range of people to gather. For us to address the past and understand it, we need to ensure it’s not just people who already understand and have that knowledge that are talking about it.”
Batty has vowed there will be “clear spaces” to talk about historical injustice – as he highlighted how modern slavery still exists in society today – with more information to come out in the coming months.
The National has been told there is a conference on sport and reparative justice at the University of Glasgow planned the week before the Games starts.
“What I can commit to is that the process we are going through to make those moments will have the widest most diverse group of people in the room so that those stories are heard and permeate through all parts of the Games,” Batty said.
What was most important for the future of the Games is that it needed to be an event that could be hosted by more nations, with the fact Africa had never been able to host looming large over it.
With Ugandan human rights lawyer Rukare now in position as the Commonwealth Sport president, Batty says lot of conversations have centred on Africa hosting a Games in the future which he believes to be an “important part of the journey”.
Reflecting on the fact that for a moment two years ago the Commonwealth Games “did not exist”, Batty said he wants to not just address how the Empire led to the Commonwealth but also what it means to be a growing movement and why new countries are joining.
“I want to make sure we create is an understanding of how the Empire led to the Commonwealth but also, as someone who worked on Birmingham 2022 and is now working on Glasgow 2026, in that four-year window, Togo and Gabon have joined the Commonwealth and therefore what does it mean to be a growing movement, what are those reasons? Why are we doing this and why are we choosing to use sport as one of the platforms to do that?” he said.
“There was a moment where the Commonwealth Games did not exist, it did not have a future and it wasn’t one nation that wanted it to continue, it was 74 in Singapore making that commitment.
“The world without a Commonwealth Games is a world where there isn’t that moment in time every four years for 74 nations to talk about the future. The past connects us, but it’s probably the future that unites us and drives us forward together.
“This needed to be an event that more nations across the Commonwealth could host and I believe in Scotland we’ve reinvented and reformatted this event so that when you look at the 74 nations and territories it genuinely is in a form that more places can host and more social and economic benefits can be created for those places.”
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