{"id":94926,"date":"2023-07-18T09:33:12","date_gmt":"2023-07-17T23:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesnewsgroup.com.au\/ballarat\/news\/games-over-2026-commonwealth-games-cancelled\/"},"modified":"2023-07-18T10:47:37","modified_gmt":"2023-07-18T00:47:37","slug":"games-over-2026-commonwealth-games-cancelled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesnewsgroup.com.au\/ballarat\/news\/games-over-2026-commonwealth-games-cancelled\/","title":{"rendered":"GAMES OVER: 2026 Commonwealth Games cancelled"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>UPDATED:<\/strong> The 2026 Commonwealth Games slated for regional Victoria will not go ahead, but promised infrastructure projects will remain.<\/p>\n<p>Premier Daniel Andrews announced this morning that cost blowouts meant Victoria couldn\u2019t afford to deliver the sporting event.<\/p>\n<p>The state government had budgeted $2.6 billion to deliver the Games, but Mr Andrews said today that revised estimates had costed the event as around $6 billion-$7 billion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve made a lot of tough choices in this job, but this isn\u2019t one of them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is all cost and no benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Government ministers said that project previously promised under the $2.6 billion allocation \u2013 including new housing and sporting infrastructure \u2013 would still go ahead despite the cancellation.<\/p>\n<p>More to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>UPDATED: The 2026 Commonwealth Games slated for regional Victoria will not go ahead, but promised infrastructure projects will remain. Premier Daniel Andrews announced this morning that cost blowouts meant Victoria couldn\u2019t afford to deliver the sporting event. The state government had budgeted $2.6 billion to deliver the Games, but Mr Andrews said today that revised [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/timesnewsgroup.com.au\/ballarat\/news\/games-over-2026-commonwealth-games-cancelled\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":195,"featured_media":94927,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-94926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>GAMES OVER: 2026 Commonwealth Games cancelled - Ballarat Times<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The 2026 Commonwealth Games have been cancelled. 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