JOIN US Opening ceremony: July 27
Closing ceremony: August 12.
Main venues: Olympic Stadium, Aquatics Centre, Velodrome and BMX Circuit.
Historic venues: Wembley Stadium (football), All-England Club in Wimbledon (tennis), Lord’s Cricket Ground (archery) and Horse Guards Parade (beach volleyball).
Motto: Inspire a generation
The Games in numbers:
Sports disciplines: 26
Events: 302
No of venues: 34
Countries: 204
No of athletes: 10,500
Press & media: 20,000
Logo: Represents the number 2012, with the Olympic Rings embedded within the zero.
Mascots: Wenlock and Mandeville are animations depicting two drops of steel from a steelworks in Bolton.
Wenlock is named after the Shropshire town of Much Wenlock, where the Wenlock Olympian Society held its first Olympian Games in 1850, regarded as an inspiration for the modern Olympic games. He has five friendship bracelets on his wrist.
Each bracelet takes the colour of an Olympic ring. The three points on his head represent the three places on the podium. The pattern on his body with the logo of the games symbolises the whole world coming to London in 2012.
Mandeville, the paralympics mascot comes from the Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire which organised the Stoke Mandeville Games in 1948, a competition for injured soldiers; they are regarded as the inspiration for the Paralympics.
Medals: Each medal weighs 375–400gms, having a diameter of 85mm and a thickness of 7mm, with the sport and discipline engraved on the rim. The obverse, features Nike, the Greek goddess of victory; the reverse features the Games logo, the River Thames and a series of lines representing "the energy of athletes and a sense of pulling together".