With sport interrupted since mid-March, in a sudden unprecedented stop not seen since World War II, between 1939 and 1945, hundreds of competitions around the world were postponed and not even the Tokyo2020 Olympic Games happened.

The largest multi-sport event in the world was postponed to the Summer of 2021, as were the final stages of Euro2020 and the America Football Cup, reflecting a time dominated by uncertainty since the first wave of the pandemic.

The reactivation of most championships depended on the pandemic risk regarding each country and the creation of elaborate tight schedules, as expressed by the realisation of the last 10 rounds of the Premier Liga in Portugal, between 3 June and 26 July.

Other short-term events were cancelled, such as the Estoril Open for tennis and the Rally of Portugal, or converted into a virtual edition, such as the Porto Marathon, in the resumption of a partial sport conditioned to the evolution of cases of infection.

This atypical context caused unprecedented damage in the sector, but privileged Portugal in organising major events and transferred the final eight of the football Champions League to the stadiums of Luz and José Alvalade, in Lisbon, from 12 to 23 August.

In addition to the newformat, with qualifiers converted into a single game, universal health restrictions were adopted in the resumption of sports in the middle of a pandemic, from screening tests to the massive use of a mask.

Portugal also benefited from competitive adjustments in the main categories of motorsports and hosted stages of the Formula 1 World Championship (25 October) and MotoGP (22 November).