Kazan, February 21 (PL) -- Although competitions have been taking place for three days as part of the first Russia 2024 Future Games, athletes and spectators are awaiting the official opening of the Games today in the city of Kazan.

The ceremony will take place at 19:00 Moscow time on Wednesday and is expected to be attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart Aleksandr Lukashenko, among other guests.

The Future Games, the first of its kind in history, is a new high-tech tournament of international standard, and will run until 3 March in Kazan, the capital of the Russian Republic of Tatarstan.

This international multi-sport e-sports tournament based on the phygital concept, which involves the combination of the virtual and real (physical + digital) worlds, will involve competitions in 21 disciplines, including phygital football, hockey and basketball, laser tag, drone racing, robot battles and sports programming.

The organiser of the Games, the Russian Federation of Phygital Sports, announced that some 2,000 participants from 107 countries will take part in the competitions.

In total there will be 227 teams, where the best teams from Europe, South America and Asia will compete. The competition is divided into five categories or "challenges", classified into: sports, tactics, strategies, technologies and speed.In addition, celebrities, including athletes, bloggers and streamers, have been invited to the "Future Games" in Kazan. In the context of the "Games of the Future" there will also be show matches with the participation of well-known athletes.

The pre-opening competitions that have already started are: phygital hockey, Dota-2, War-Face, Laser tag, World of Tanks and phygital basketball. In successive days, cyber athletics, cycling, as well as phygital football and martial arts will be added.Robot battles, rhythm and dance simulator, drone racing, phygital bmx, sports programming, Speedrun, skateboarding, MLBB, and Standoff 2 laser tag will also compete.