Olympic Flame to Arrive in Japan on March 20, 2020

September 13, 2018

Tokyo- The torch of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics will be lit on March 12, 2020, with the Olympic flame arriving in Japan on March 20, the Tokyo organizing committee said Wednesday.

Following the lighting ceremony at the ruins of the Temple of Hera in Olympia, the torch will travel across Greece for eight days. On March 19, a ceremony to hand it over to Japan will take place at the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens.

The schedule was agreed on among the Tokyo organizing committee, the International Olympic Committee and the Hellenic Olympic Committee.

As a key theme of the Tokyo Games is to support reconstruction following the massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan on March 11, 2011, the Olympic flame will arrive at the Air Self-Defense Force's Matsushima base in Miyagi Prefecture, one of the three hardest-hit northeastern prefectures.

Before a nationwide torch relay starts in Fukushima, another of the three, on March 26, the Olympic flame will be exhibited in the three prefectures, also including Iwate, for two days each.

The torch relay will cover all of the country's 47 prefectures, traveling for 121 days until the Olympic opening ceremony on July 24. Jiji Press