GENEVA, July 07. /ITAR-TASS/. Norway’s Oslo, Kazakhstan’s Almaty and China’s Beijing have been confirmed as the official candidates to host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games.

The deadline for submitting bids to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) expired in November 2013, when six cities became official contenders for hosting the Winter Olympics in 2022. However, three European cities, including Poland’s Krakow, Sweden’s Stockholm and Ukraine’s Lviv have later withdrawn their applications for various reasons. Thus, only three candidates remained – Beijing, Oslo and Almaty.

Inspection trips to the cities bidding to host the 2022 Olympics will start in the beginning of 2015. The head of the IOC evaluation commission is Alexander Zhukov, Russian Olympic Committee President. The winner in the bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics will be announced on July 31, 2015 at an IOC session in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.