Away from the marquee athletics and swimming events, women's Twenty20 cricket makes its debut and 3x3 basketball will feature for the first time while sedate lawn bowls is a fixture.
There is an integrated para sports programme in some events.
The Games, held every four years, are often criticised as a quirky sporting relic but will be launched in style at Thursday's opening ceremony, headlined by 1980s pop band Duran Duran, formed in Birmingham.
Sporting powerhouse Australia have topped the medals table at every Games since 1990 except in 2014, when England finished top in Glasgow -- the last time the event was held on British soil.

England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland compete as separate teams during the Commonwealths rather than as a combined British outfit.

In the pool, Emma McKeon, Ariarne Titmus, Kaylee McKeown and teenage sensation Mollie O'Callaghan will lead the charge for a star-studded Australian team.
The Commonwealth Games comes hot on the heels of the world athletics championships in Eugene, Oregon, which only finished on Sunday.

Chopra, who won javelin gold for India in Tokyo last year, said he was "hurt" at not being able to defend his Commonwealth title after suffering a groin strain during the world championships, where he won silver.
There are major doubts over the participation of Jamaican sprint trio Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Shericka Jackson and Elaine Thompson-Herah, who swept the 100m podium in Oregon.
Jackson, who previously suggested she would be competing in Birmingham, followed up her 100m silver at the worlds by running the second-fastest time in history in the 200m.

In another blow, British sprinter Dina Asher-Smith announced on Wednesday she had withdrawn from the England team due to a hamstring injury she sustained in Oregon "due to the short turnaround".