Mayor of London Boris Johnson has today confirmed that London will host an event on 19 July to celebrate last year's Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The Mayor made the widely-trailed announcement during his keynote speech this morning at NCVO's Evolve conference in the capital.

Johnson said that approximately 50,000 people will converge at an as-yet-unconfirmed venue for an event he billed as "a fiesta of volunteering".

And its announcement came as the climax to the Mayor's enthusiastic speech on the importance of appreciating volunteers. 

"What was the best thing about the Olympics last year?" he asked the crowd. "It was the way that everybody proved the sceptics wrong. And we're going to prove those same people wrong about the legacy."

Johnson said there is a tendency for people to be "put off of volunteering by a fear that their good deed may not be appreciated, and they will in some way embarrass themselves".

He continued: "The whole purpose of what we're trying to do through Team London is to get rid of that embarrassment.

"That's why we're hosting a fiesta of volunteering, at the Olympic Park. We will remind ourselves of when the world looked to London and saw an incorrigibly happy, diverse, multicultural, dynamic city that was animated by the hospitality and good natures and high-spiritedness of tens of thousands of volunteers.

"And we will prove that it wasn't just a flash in the pan, that London is truly the greatest city on earth."