About the Senior Games

The Empire State Senior Games were founded in 1988 as the senior edition of the New York State amateur sports programme. From the start, Cortland served as the host — the city’s college-and-park infrastructure, its central location, and the local sports council’s organising capacity made it a natural permanent base.

The state-funded era

Through the late 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s the Senior Games ran under the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, on a model very similar to the Summer Games but with five-year age brackets and a National-Senior-Games-style multi-sport festival format.

Cortland Regional Sports Council (2011 onward)

The 2010 state budget crisis that ended the Summer Games also ended state funding for the Senior Games. The Cortland Regional Sports Council — the local non-profit that had handled venue logistics for the event since its founding — took on the full operation. It has run the Games annually since, registering competitors, scheduling sports across venues throughout Cortland County, and acting as New York’s official qualifier route to the National Senior Games.

See also

• Sport list
• Next edition — June 2026
• Empire State Games history — how the Senior edition fits with the rest of the four-format Games family.