Nine nations competed in gymnastics at the 1896 Summer Olympics.
The figure refers specifically to the gymnastics competition, not to the total number of countries associated with the entire Athens Games. Across the eight men’s gymnastics events, 71 competitors were recorded as representing nine nations, with Greece supplying 52 of those competitors.
The gymnastics programme ran from 9 to 11 April 1896 at Panathinaiko Stadium. It included team parallel bars, team horizontal bar, vault, pommel horse, rings, horizontal bar, parallel bars and rope climbing.
This number is easy to confuse with the broader 1896 Olympics participation totals. Modern summaries commonly give 14 nations for the Games overall, although national classifications are disputed because formal national teams and consistent nationality rules had not yet fully developed. The gymnastics-specific total, however, is listed as nine.