Brunei Darussalam has been touted as a possible host country of the 34th Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in 2027, subject to approval from the government, during a Southeast Asian Games Federation (SEAGF) Council virtual meeting recently.
His Royal Highness Prince Haji Sufri Bolkiah, President of Brunei Darussalam National Olympic Council (BDNOC) attended the meeting.
The meeting was chaired by Vietnam’s Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Nguyen Ngoc Thien, who is also the President of the Vietnam Olympic Committee.
Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) President Datuk Seri Mohamad Norza Zakaria said, “Brunei, who is supposed to host the 34th edition in 2027, has not confirmed its status as it needs to discuss with its government first,” according to Bernama.
With Vietnam scheduled to host the 31st SEA Games at the end of next year, Cambodia has been designated as the host for 2023, Thailand in 2025 and Laos in 2029.
The SEAGF Council meeting also heard that the organising committee of the next instalment of the Games will consider the appeal from 10 member associations on the inclusion of 22 sports and three disciplines.
Vietnam is expected to finalise the list of sports when the members reconvene in the next meeting in November.
The meeting also accepted 36 sports as proposed by the Vietnam Olympic Committee to be listed in the programme of the 31st SEA Games.
The 36 sports are athletics, aquatics (swimming and diving), archery, badminton, basketball, boxing, canoe, cycling (road and mountain bike), dance sport, fencing, football/futsal, golf, gymnastics, handball, volleyball, judo, karate, rowing, shooting, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, weightlifting and wrestling, billiards and snooker, chess/xianqi (Chinese chess), muay thai, pencak silat, petanque, sepak takraw, finswimming, bodybuilding, wushu, kurash, kickboxing and vovinam (Vietnam martial arts).
The meeting also accepted the report of the 30th SEA Games in the Philippines, presented by Chief Operating Officer of the Philippine SEA Games Organising Committee (PHISGOC) Ramon Suzara.
The next SEAGF Council, Executive and Standing Committee meetings are scheduled to be held in November.
In July 2015, Brunei Darussalam withdrew the hosting rights to host the 30th SEA Games in 2019 citing financial and logistical reasons, which was later taken up by the Philippines.
Brunei became the seventh country to host the SEA Games after Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines when they hosted the multi-sport festival back in 1999.
