People wait outside the headquarters of the Paris Olympic organizers, on June 20, 2023 in Saint-Denis, outside Paris. (PHOTO / AP)

PARIS - Free invites to the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony will be given to 222,000 spectators chosen by authorities, France's Interior Minister said on Tuesday.

Cities and other organizing bodies will each be given a number of invites to distribute. Guests will have to go through a security screening process supervised by intelligence services before they can attend the event from the upper quays of the River Seine.

These 222,000 spots are in addition to the 104,000 paying spectators who will watch the ceremony from the lower quays. The revised total of 326,000 spectators is almost half of the 600,000 that had been estimated to attend in the original plan.

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The minister said he reserved the right, if necessary, to revise that number down again.