London 2012: Paralympic prices revealed

The cheapest tickets are on sale for £20.12

More than half of the two million tickets for the London 2012 Paralympics will cost £10 or less, organisers of the Games have announced.

More than 95% of tickets - for the 20 sports - will cost £50 or less, and 75% will be £20 or below, London 2012 said.

Opening and closing ceremony tickets start at £20.12 and go up to £500.

More than 4,200 athletes from 150 nations will take part in the Games from 29 August to 9 September 2012. Applications open in September.

The London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games said prices start at £10 for adults and £5 for anyone aged 16 or under and 60 or over on 29 August 2012, when the spectacle begins.

They are less than tickets for the Olympic Games, which range from £20 to £2,012, and saw about 1.8 million people apply for 6.6 million tickets.

London 2012 chief executive Paul Deighton said the pricing structure was fair, and he hoped it would encourage people to attend venues and create "fantastic atmospheres".

He said: "The Paralympic Games will light up London with quite simply brilliant sport next year.

"The UK is the spiritual home of the Paralympic movement and with superb medal prospects for ParalympicsGB, we believe that the British public will come out in their thousands to watch."

Olympics Minister Hugh Robertson said it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see the Games on home soil, and London mayor Boris Johnson said interest was already huge.

The Paralympic Games will be staged in many of the Olympic venues, including the Olympic stadium (athletics), aquatics centre (swimming) and velodrome (cycling), as well as the likes of Eton Dorney (rowing), Weymouth (sailing) and Greenwich Park (equestrian para-dressage).

The Olympic Park will also stage the five-a-side and seven-a-side football at the Olympic hockey centre and goalball at the Olympic handball arena, as well as wheelchair rugby and wheelchair basketball at the Olympic basketball arena, although some basketball will also be held at the North Greenwich Arena.

The ExCel exhibition centre in the Docklands will host boccia, judo, sitting volleyball, wheelchair fencing, table tennis and powerlifting.

The wheelchair tennis events will be staged at Eton Manor while the archery and shooting will both be held at the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich.

For the Olympic Games, there has been criticism of the prices, the ballot system and the fact that money is taken from accounts before applicants know which events they have secured.

Applicants were originally told to make sure they had enough money in their accounts from 10 May to 10 June.

But organisers now say people will not be billed until next Monday at the earliest while they carry out ballots for oversubscribed events.