Olympic Opening Ceremonies 2018: NBC Online Live-Stream Features

South Korea is hosting the Winter Olympics for the first time in 2018, and the opening ceremony will mark the official start of the Pyeongchang Games on Friday.

The 35,000-seater Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium will host the ceremony, which will begin at 8 p.m. local time (11 a.m. GMT, 6 a.m. ET).

Pyeongchang 2018 provided a glimpse of the venue back in November:

The show is expected to last around two hours and will include all of the traditional components of such ceremonies, including the parade of athletes, the symbolic release of pigeons and the lighting of the Olympic torch.

The artistic element has been kept a closely guarded secret, as is usually the case with Olympic opening ceremonies.

Game organizers have said the ceremony will "highlight a key message of peace," and the festivities are "expected to intertwine Korean history and tradition with aspects of modern culture, such as K-Pop," per Jane Chung of Reuters.

Hyunjoo Jin, also of Reuters, explained there have been concerns the spectators for the opening ceremony could be exposed to extreme cold due to the stadium's open roof.

The ceremony will be broadcast live on NBC and will also be available to live-stream at NBCOlympics.com and on the NBC Sports app.

Per Todd Spangler of Variety, NBC will also be presenting live virtual-reality coverage of the opening ceremony in a first for Winter Olympic programming—there will be more than 50 hours of coverage available in the format across the 2018 Games.

The opening ceremony for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang is not actually the first event taking place at the Games.

The competitive action gets underway on Thursday with the start of the curling and ski jumping events, while Friday will see the beginning of competition in figure skating and freestyle skiing.