The 2018 XXI Commonwealth Games is in Australia and a new coin pair launches from the starters blocks

Held every four years, in 2018 the Commonwealth Games kicks off for the twenty-first time. It will be held in Australia for the fifth time, on this occasion in Australia’s Gold Coast. The Commonwealth is an intergovernmental organisation of 52 member states that are mostly former territories of the British Empire. Including some small dependencies, 69 different teams will compete in 2018 in what is the highest profile manifestation of the organisation.

A multi-sport event, while athletics forms the core of the games, sports particularly popular in the Commonwealth, such as bowls, netball, and rugby sevens make for an interesting variation from the Olympic Games. The 2018 event is situated in the Queensland city of Gold Coast, the sixth biggest in Australia and sited in a humid, semi-tropical region facing the Great Barrier Reef. Very much a tourist centre, the city is known for its modern culture and beautiful beaches and will no doubt be a popular location to host a major sporting event.

The current regulations state that from the 26 approved sports administered by Commonwealth Governing Bodies, a minimum of ten core sports and maximum of seventeen sports must be included in any Commonwealth Games schedule. The current approved sports include the 10 core sports: athletics, badminton, boxing, hockey, lawn bowls, netball (for women), rugby sevens, squash, swimming and weightlifting. Integrated disabled competitions are also proposed for the Games in nine sports: swimming, athletics, cycling, table tennis, cycling, powerlifting and lawn bowls. Along these events for the first time EAD events in triathlon will be held,with the medals being added to the final tally for each nation. A record 38 para events will be contested at these games. On 8 March 2016 Beach Volleyball was announced as the 18th sport.

The program will be broadly similar to that of the 2014 Commonwealth Games, with the major changes the dropping of judo, the reintroduction of basketball, the debut of women’s rugby sevens and beach volleyball.On 7 October 2016, it was announced seven new events for women were added to the sport program, meaning there will be an equal number of events for men and women. This marks the first time in history that a major multi-sport event will have equality in terms of events. In total 275 events events in 18 sports will be contested.