PARIS — IOC president Thomas Bach on Saturday said he will leave office next year and that the Olympics is “best served with a change in leadership.”

Bach has led the International Olympic Committee since September 2013 and his 12-year limit was due to expire next year – but the members asked him last year to consider changing IOC rules to let him remain in office.

The 70-year-old Bach said the IOC needed a new leader who could steer the Olympic movement through an increasingly digital and political world.

“New times are calling for new leaders,” Bach told the IOC membership in Paris.