HAMBURG, Germany (AFP) - The German Olympic Committee (DOSB) unanimously agreed to support Munich's bid to host the 2018 Winter Olympics, it was announced here on Saturday.

All 400 members of the DOSB voted in favour of the Bavarian city during its annual meeting in Hamburg and Munich will now be officially submitted as a bid to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), who will announce their decision in 2011.

"The State, the region and the German sporting movement want to organise the 2018 Olympics, so we now need to get our bid as strong as possible," said Wolfgang Schaeuble, the German Minister of the Interior.

And DOSB president Thomas Bach, an IOC vice-president, says the Germans have reason to feel confident.

"We have no cause to think this bid will fail," he told German sports agency SID.

But he warned against complacency and said the emphasis must be to submit as strong a bid as possible.

The cost of organising an Olympics in Munich is not known, but the budget for a candidate bid is estimated to be in the region of 30 to 35 million euros.

The bid proposes the 2018 Winter Olympics will be spread across three sites.

Munich would host the ice events including figure-skating and ice hockey, while Garmisch-Partenkirchen, who hosted the 1936 Winter Olympics, would stage the snow events.

And the luge, bobsleigh and skeleton events would be entrusted to Schoenau.

Germany last staged an Olympics in 1972 when Munich hosted the summer games and, if successful, would be the first city to host both winter and summer events.

The other city set to bid for the 2018 Winter Olympics is the South Korean city of Pyeongchang, who just missed out for the 2010 and 2014 editions.