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The 31st SEA Games scheduled to be held from 21st November to 2nd December in Hanoi, has been postponed to 2022 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a statement, The Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) said that the SEA Games Federation (SEAGF), which met virtually yesterday, agreed with the postponement after rejecting the proposals twice earlier. It stated that the SEAGF Council will determine a new date. 

“The SEAGF members praised the work done thus far by the Vietnam Organising Committee (VOC), but also took note of the current conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic in the South-East Asian region,” the statement added.

According to local media reports last month, the VOC wanted to postpone the Hanoi Games to March or June 2022 due to the increasing number of Covid-19 cases in Vietnam and other South-east Asian countries. This also delayed the preparations of the hosts.

Vietnam is set to host the SEA Games for the second time after the 2003 edition and has previously listed 520 events from 40 sports for this year’s Games.

The only time the biennial games has been cancelled since the inaugural edition in 1959, was in 1963 as Cambodia could not host the multi-sport games due to political instability.

The latest decision will see an influx of multi-sport events in the 2022 calendar, including the Beijing Winter Olympics (February 4th to 20th), Birmingham Commonwealth Games (July 28th to August 8th) and Hangzhou Asian Games (September 10th to 25th).

Malaysia was among the eight countries, who previously rejected the proposals to postpone the SEA Games to 2022 due to many reasons.