The city of Sapporo has expressed its interest in bringing the Winter Olympics back to Japan's northern island in 2026.

Now, the Hokkaido capital, and the Japanese Olympic Committee, will move forward with assessing the merit of a potential bid.

Sapporo will now enter a dialogue process, in which it will explore the benefits and opportunities of hosting the Olympics/Paralympics, while consulting with the JOC and International Olympic Committee before submitting its candidacy proposals at the end of March, 2018.