President Obama Announces Farewell Speech Will Be in Chicago

President Obama announced Monday that his farewell address will be in Chicago on Tuesday, Jan. 10. Media outlets had previously reported that the speech would be in Chicago, but this was the first official confirmation.

The president wrote that he is just starting to write his speech, but he hopes it will be "a chance to say thank you for this amazing journey, to celebrate the ways you've changed this country for the better these past eight years, and to offer some thoughts on where we all go from here."

Chicago is home for the president. After college he worked with a group of churches in Chicago to help communities impacted by the closure of steel plants. The president later taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago before running for public office. The Obama family has a home in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood, and his presidential library is slated to be built in the the nearby Jackson Park.

The event will be held on the evening of Jan. 10 at McCormick Place, a sprawling convention center on the shore of Lake Michigan. Doors are scheduled to open at 5 p.m. Free tickets will be available to the public at McCormick Place on Saturday, Jan. 7 on a first-come-first-serve basis.

Official White House Photo by Pete Souza of the president in the Oval Office, Feb. 28, 2014.