Krakow (Poland), Oslo (Norway), Almaty (Kazakhstan), Lviv (Ukraine) and Beijing (China) have all submitted their respective Applicant File to host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games and Paralympic Games to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the organization said on Friday.

Following the list of contenders being announced in November, the cities attended an IOC Orientation Seminar the following month before visiting the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Sochi as official observers in order to gain experience needed to complete a bid questionnaire and their Applicant Files by the deadline of Friday.

The Files provide the IOC with an overview of each city's vision and concept for the Games and form the basis for an initial technical analysis of the bid, the IOC said in a press release.

"These files will now be studied by an IOC-appointed working group, which will then submit a report to the IOC Executive Board (EB). The EB will decide which of the five cities will be accepted as candidate cities and proceed to Phase 2 at a meeting in July."

In the second phase, candidature files from the successful cities will be due in January 2015, after which an IOC Evaluation Commission will visit each city to prepare a technical report to assist IOC members in making their decision.

There will then be a two-day briefing where members can see the Evaluation Commission Reports and question each candidate city, before a final decision is due to be made at the IOC Session in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on July 31, 2015.

The race was originally a six-horse one among Almaty, Beijing, Krakow, Lviv, Oslo and Stockholm, but the Swedish capital withdrew in January due to a lack of government support.