International Children’s Games (ICG) are an annual sports event for schoolchildren aged between 12 and 15 years.

Metod Klemenc, the conceptual father of the games, was a dedicated teacher of physical education in the 1960s, and also president of the then leading Slovenian athletic club, AD Kladivar Celje, and he realised that young people were no longer enthusiastic about the “queen of sports” and that it was becoming a struggle to steer young sporting talents into athletics, which like gymnastics provided the basis for the majority of other sports. With the idea of making athletics more attractive to primary school children, in 1967 he came up with the Celje primary school athletic olympiad. After a successful competition, in 1968 he also hatched the idea of organising sports games in Celje for primary school pupils with international participation. The focus in this was not just to be on the sports competition, but also on the desire for children from countries with different cultures and social and political systems to have the opportunity to socialise and get to know each other. The first such games took place on 5 June 1968 in Celje, with the support of the city and in cooperation with all the Celje primary schools and the local athletic club.

The event, in the third largest city in Slovenia, could not have come at a more opportune moment. At that time Europe was ideologically divided. In the revolutionary year of 1968, when a break with the old traditions was being demanded, East and West linked hands and breathed as one in Celje. Participants from nine cities in five different countries competed just in the athletic disciplines. Children from other cities slept with the families of their peers from Celje, and sports officials were hosted by local sports workers. The games were a success and pointed the way forward for further development. The originally biannual meetings became an annual event in 1982. From the very beginning the games preserved the special feature that they are based on mutual linking of cities, not countries. In the initial period, one thing common to the events was that the entire organisation was based solely on the enthusiasm of the members of the international committee, which was established after the first games in Celje, and on the help of city administrations and numerous volunteers in the cities that organised the games. As the games developed, the number of competitive disciplines increased, and the one constant from the very beginning was athletics.

An important breakthrough in the development of the games came in 1990, when the International Olympic Committee formally supported the ICG organisation and took it under its wing. This gave the games, in which previously only European cities had participated, a new dimension. Their renown soon reached other continents. A powerful symbolic message and a harbinger of the coming new period was provided by the presence of the Canadian city of Hamilton at the games in the Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod, part of the then Soviet Union. In 1994 Hamilton became the first non-European host of the games. At that time the organisers included competitions for disabled athletes for the first time in the programme. And another Slovenian city broke new ground in this area; Ravne na Koroškem organised the first winter children’s games. In the middle of the 1990s the basic concept, which was founded on the partnership of cities in the ICG, started in part to be supplemented by plans to create national committees. After the founding of the first such committee in 1995 – the Slovenian national committee for international games, which later acquired the official name of the Slovenian Association of International Children’s Games – a whole network of organisations in other countries appeared.

In the 21st century the organisation of the games increasingly involved Asian cities, Taipei being one of the first in 2002. Record-breaking games were held in Cleveland in 2004, where an unprecedented 2,500 competitors from 128 cities took part. At the event marking the opening of the games, participants were even greeted by US President George W. Bush. In 2014 the Australian city of Lake Macquarie experienced the magic of this rapidly developing children’s competition. To date the event has yet to be hosted only in Africa and South America, although they have already been represented at the games. In its decades of development, the event has become globalised and in many ways has changed considerably, but in its essence it remains the same. 

In 2025, Tallinn is the proud holder of the title European Capital of Sport. The main event of the European Capital of Sport 2025 is the 57th International Children's Games taking place in Tallinn from August 4th to 7th.   In these games, 12-15-year-old schoolchildren will compete in seven different sports: football, 3x3 basketball, beach volleyball, athletics, swimming, judo, and fencing.