The United States Olympic Committee announced on Tuesday it will bid to host the 2024 Summer Games, but the candidate city won't be selected until early next year.
Los Angeles, Washington, Boston and San Francisco all made their final pitches for staging the four-yearly showpiece to the USOC board of directors on Tuesday.
"The board voted unanimously to move forward with a bid," said USOC chairman Larry Probst. "We are going to take our time and pick the city we think has the best chance of winning the competition from other cities around the world.
"This is going to be a really, really difficult decision. That is why we want to make sure we get to the best possible decision."
The United States has won the most medals at the last five Summer Games but it hasn't hosted a Summer Olympics since Atlanta in 1996.
The 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics were the last Games on US soil.
All four cities have said it would cost between $US4 billion ($A4.33 billion) and $US5 billion ($A5.41 billion) to host the Olympics, not including infrastructure improvements such as airport expansion, public transit and highway upgrades which could take the price up as high as $US10 billion ($A10.82 billion).
"The board would like to have some further discussion," Probst said.
"We want to make a very thoughtful decision and the best possible decision and so the next part of the process is to get the board together again in the early part of January.
"Hopefully in the early part of next year we will reach a final decision about the city we will pick to move forward as our candidate city."
The USA can expect a tough competition for the 2024 Games.
The official decision to bid for the Olympics comes just a day after Italy announced Rome would spearhead what is expected to be a multi-city bid.
Germany has said that Berlin or Hamburg will be put forward for the 2024 or 2028 Summer Games.
Paris is to decide in January whether to stage a bid and the Azerbaijan capital, Baku, and Doha - both beaten by Tokyo in the bid to host the 2020 Games - are potential candidates. South Africa could have a bid by Durban or a joint Johannesburg-Pretoria bid.
The International Olympic Committee will choose a final list of candidate cities in May 2016 and make a final decision in Lima in 2017.
