The deadline for bids to host the 2024 Olympic Games falls at midnight in Lausanne on Tuesday with five cities already in the mix.
Confirmed as candidates are Budapest, Hamburg, Los Angeles, Paris and Rome with two others, Toronto and Baku, said to be still weighing up their options.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) will announce an official list of bidders on Wednesday at 0700 GMT.
In contrast to previous years, there will be no procedure of sifting through the shortlist to eliminate weaker candidates before a final vote is taken by the IOC in Lima in September 2017.
The early favourites are Paris, which last hosted the Olympics in 1924 and which narrowly lost out to London for the 2012 Games and Los Angeles, the hosts in 1984, who stepped in to be the US candidate when Boston opted out. – Agence France-Presse
