New Sports at the Los Angeles Olympics: All Five Explained
The new sports at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics are flag football, lacrosse, squash, cricket and baseball-softball. Why the IOC added each one.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Team USA & the Olympics24 min read
- Sports added by LA28
- 5
- Approved by the IOC
- October 2023
- Olympic debuts
- Flag football, squash
- Lacrosse last a medal sport
- 1908
On October 16, 2023, in a session hall in Mumbai, the International Olympic Committee voted through a list that would have looked absurd a generation earlier: cricket, lacrosse, squash, flag football, and baseball paired with softball. All five were proposed by the Los Angeles organizing committee, LA28, and all five will be on the program when the Summer Games open in Southern California in July 2028.
That is the direct answer to the question of new sports at the Los Angeles Olympics. Five sports were added on top of the IOC's core program. Flag football and squash have never been in the Olympics before. Lacrosse returns for the first time since 1908, cricket for the first time since a single match in Paris in 1900, and baseball and softball come back after missing Paris 2024. None of them has a permanent place. Each is in for 2028 only, on the strength of a host proposal, and has to earn its way onto a later Games through the IOC's normal review.
The rest of this guide takes each of the five in turn, then looks at what was dropped or reshaped for 2028, the events added inside sports that were already there, and where Team USA starts with an edge.
The five new sports at the Los Angeles Olympics, and who decided
The package went to the IOC Session as a single proposal, which is how the Olympic Charter allows a host city to add sports. The IOC's Executive Board recommended it first, the full membership approved it in Mumbai, and the vote was close to unanimous.
- 5Sports added by the host
- 2Sports making a first Olympic appearance
- 1908Year lacrosse last awarded medals
- 1900Year of cricket's only Olympic match
Counts and years from the IOC's October 2023 decision and the official Olympic results database; they describe the package, not the number of medal events inside it.
The five are not a random set. Each one fits at least one of three things organizers said they wanted: an audience already in the United States, an audience abroad that the Olympics struggles to reach, and venues that already exist. Flag football and lacrosse are American sports with young players. Cricket is the biggest prize in the second category, with a following in India and across South Asia that dwarfs most Olympic sports. Squash had been knocking on the door for decades and asked for little in the way of infrastructure.
| Sport | Format in 2028 | Previous Olympic medal appearances | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flag football | Five-a-side, non-contact | None | Olympic debut |
| Squash | Singles | None | Olympic debut |
| Lacrosse | Sixes, a short-field six-a-side game | 1904, 1908 | Return after 120 years |
| Cricket | Twenty20 | 1900 | Return after 128 years |
| Baseball and softball | Standard nine-inning baseball, seven-inning softball | Baseball 1992-2008 and 2020; softball 1996-2008 and 2020 | Return after missing Paris 2024 |
A note on how the IOC counts these. Baseball and softball are counted as one sport with two disciplines, which is why the list reads "five sports" even though six competitions are involved. The same bookkeeping is why the medal-event count rises by more than five.
Medal events inside each added sport
Every one of the five has a men's and a women's event, with baseball going to men and softball to women. That keeps the additions inside the IOC's push for gender balance, a theme that runs through the whole 2028 program and comes up again further down this page.
The athlete numbers are small. Each new sport is given a modest quota so the total size of the Games stays inside the IOC's cap of roughly 10,500 athletes for the core sports, with the host additions sitting on top. That cap is the main reason the new team sports have short tournaments with few teams.
How a host city adds sports for its own Games only
Before 2014, getting a sport into the Olympics meant winning an IOC vote years in advance, joining the permanent program and pushing another sport out to make room. The process was slow, and it favored sports that were already in. Squash lost three times in a row under that system.
Olympic Agenda 2020, the package of reforms the IOC adopted in December 2014 in Monaco, changed the mechanics. One of its recommendations let the organizing committee of a given Games propose one or more additional sports for that edition only. The IOC still approves the list, but the initiative comes from the host. Tokyo used the new rule first and added baseball and softball, karate, skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing. Paris added four: breaking, skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing. Los Angeles took the five on this page.
- Federation pitchInternational federations make their case to the organizing committee, usually years before the Games.
- Host shortlistThe organizing committee, here LA28, picks the sports it wants and submits a proposal to the IOC.
- IOC reviewThe IOC's Olympic Programme Commission and Executive Board assess cost, venues, athlete numbers and appeal.
- Session voteThe full IOC Session votes on the package, as it did in Mumbai in October 2023.
- Event detailThe Executive Board later fixes the medal events and athlete quotas for each added sport.
- After the GamesThe sport drops off unless a later host proposes it again or the IOC moves it into the core program.
The sequence under the Olympic Charter and the IOC's Agenda 2020 reforms; timings vary by Games and are set by the IOC.
That last step is the catch. A host addition is a one-Games license. Karate appeared in Tokyo and was not on the program in Paris. Breaking had one Games. The Brisbane organizers, hosting in 2032, will choose their own additions, and none of the LA28 five has a promise of a place there.
Why the IOC built it this way
The reform solved two problems at once. Hosts wanted to sell tickets and television to their own populations, and a sport with a big home following does that. The IOC wanted to try new sports without the long, political fight of adding them permanently, and without the core program growing every four years.
The cost is uncertainty. A federation that gets in as a host addition has to build a program, find funding and recruit athletes for a Games it may never return to. Squash and lacrosse officials have said openly that the goal is to perform well enough in 2028 to stay. Skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing show it can be done: all three began as Tokyo additions, were proposed again by Paris, and have since been placed on the Los Angeles program by the IOC itself rather than by the host.
It is a sensible system with one awkward feature. The sports that benefit most are those whose fan base happens to live in the host country, which makes the Olympic program partly a function of geography.
Flag football: five-a-side, no tackling, and the NFL's interest
Flag football at the Olympics is not the backyard game, and it is not eleven-man football with flags. It is a five-on-five, non-contact version governed internationally by the International Federation of American Football, IFAF. The field is much shorter than an NFL field, there is no kicking game, and a play ends when a defender pulls one of the flags hanging from the ball carrier's belt.
The basics, in a few lines:
- Five players a side, on offense and defense, with free substitution.
- No blocking and no tackling. Contact is a foul.
- The offense has a set number of downs to cross midfield and then to score, rather than the ten-yard chains of the NFL.
- After a touchdown, a team tries for one or two extra points from different distances, and there are no field goals.
- Rushers start from a set distance off the line of scrimmage, which gives the quarterback time to throw.
The scoring details, the rush line and the penalty list are in our dedicated guide to flag football rules for five-on-five play. What matters here is why this sport, in this form, made the Olympic program.
Why the NFL pushed for it
Tackle football was never an option. Its rosters are enormous, the sport is played seriously in very few countries, and the injury questions would have dominated every IOC discussion. Flag football answers all three. It needs a small squad, it is played in Mexico, Europe and Asia as well as the United States, and the women's game is well established. The NFL spent years promoting it as the league's international and youth product and backed the LA28 bid publicly.
In May 2025 the NFL's team owners voted to let their players take part in Olympic flag football. That vote changed the conversation in the United States from whether a star quarterback might appear to how a national federation would choose between an NFL player and the flag specialists who have won IFAF world titles. A player who wants a place still has to be selected through the national team process, and the league and the NFL Players Association set conditions on participation around the NFL calendar.
The honest assessment is that flag football is a different sport from the one NFL players are paid to play. Quarterbacks transfer best. Offensive linemen, who make up a large share of every NFL roster, have no position in a game without blocking. Fast receivers and defensive backs fit naturally. Any NFL player who is picked will have been judged against flag players who have spent years learning the five-a-side game's spacing and timing.
The women's competition is a separate prize. The women's game has had a longer international history than many Americans assume, and it will put female football players on an Olympic field for the first time.
Lacrosse sixes and the 1904 and 1908 medals
Lacrosse has a better Olympic claim than most people realize. It was a medal sport twice. At St. Louis in 1904 it was a small tournament, won by a Canadian team, with a team of Mohawk players also competing. At London in 1908 Canada beat Great Britain in what was effectively a one-match event. After that it appeared only as a demonstration sport, in 1928, 1932 and 1948, and then vanished from the Games.
The game that returns in 2028 is not the one played in 1908, nor the ten-a-side field lacrosse of an NCAA spring Saturday. It is sixes, a format World Lacrosse designed for multi-sport Games.
| Feature | Field lacrosse (men) | Sixes |
|---|---|---|
| Players per side | 10 | 6 |
| Field | Full-size field with set offensive and defensive zones | Smaller field, no fixed positions |
| Restart after a goal | Face-off at the center | Goalkeeper restarts from the crease |
| Shot clock | Used in NCAA and pro play | Short shot clock, faster than the field game |
| Long poles | Several per team | Limited to keep the game open |
| Game length | Four 15-minute quarters in NCAA men's play | Four short quarters, played much faster |
The design goals were obvious: fewer players, so the athlete quota stays small; a smaller field, so an existing stadium can host it; and a game that moves quickly enough to explain to an audience that has never seen lacrosse. The full field rules, including face-offs and fouls, are covered in our lacrosse rules explainer.
The Haudenosaunee question
The open question hanging over Olympic lacrosse is who gets to play. The sport began among Indigenous nations of North America, and the Haudenosaunee Nationals, the team of the Six Nations confederacy, compete as a full member of World Lacrosse and have finished on the medal podium at world championships. The Olympic Charter, though, limits entries to teams sent by National Olympic Committees, and the Haudenosaunee have no NOC.
Several solutions have been floated, from a special exemption to Haudenosaunee players competing for the United States or Canada. Any answer needs the IOC, World Lacrosse and the National Olympic Committees to agree, and the IOC has historically been cautious about anything that bends its rule on national representation. This page does not track the state of those talks. It is the most interesting governance problem in the 2028 program.
Baseball and softball: in, out, in, out and back again
No sport in the modern program has a stranger Olympic record. Baseball was a demonstration sport several times across the twentieth century, including at Los Angeles in 1984, and became a medal sport at Barcelona in 1992. Softball, for women, joined at Atlanta in 1996. Both stayed through Beijing 2008. In 2005 the IOC voted them off the program for London 2012, the first sports removed since polo in 1936.
They returned for Tokyo 2020, played in 2021, as Tokyo's host addition. Japan, where both sports are hugely popular, was the obvious host to do it. Paris did not include them. Los Angeles put them back.
What it would take for major leaguers to play
The obstacle has never been the IOC. It is the calendar. The Summer Games run in the middle of the MLB regular season, and the league has never paused its schedule for the Olympics. Olympic baseball rosters have instead been built from minor leaguers, college players, veterans and players from other professional leagues. The NHL's experience is the comparison everyone in baseball cites: the hockey league has stopped its season for the Winter Games several times since 1998 and has argued about the cost each time.
For major leaguers to play in 2028, MLB and the MLB Players Association would have to agree a break in the season or a release mechanism for selected players, and the clubs would have to accept the injury risk to players they pay. The home setting in Los Angeles makes the case stronger than it was for Tokyo, and the question has been discussed in public by the league. Any arrangement would be a real change in how MLB treats the international calendar; this page explains the mechanism and does not track the negotiations. Readers who want the differences between the two disciplines can find them in our softball vs baseball comparison.
Softball has the cleaner story. American softball was the dominant team of the early Olympic era, and the sport's exits hurt it far more than they hurt baseball, because the Olympics were the top of the women's game in a way they never were for men.
Squash, the sport that kept losing
Squash's Olympic campaign is one of the longer losing streaks in sports administration. The World Squash Federation bid for the program ahead of the 2012 Games, again for 2016, again for 2020, and again for Paris 2024. Each time a different sport got the nod: golf and rugby sevens in 2009, wrestling's reinstatement in 2013, the Tokyo host additions, breaking for Paris.
The reasons given varied, but two problems came up repeatedly. Squash is hard to televise, because the ball is small and fast and the glass court surrounds the action. And the sport's world rankings were dominated for years by a small number of countries, which made it look narrow to IOC members who weighed global reach.
The sport worked on both. Glass show courts can be set up almost anywhere, and the professional tour has used them in front of the pyramids in Egypt and in Grand Central Terminal in New York, which proved squash could be staged in a temporary venue. Camera work and replay improved. And a Los Angeles organizing committee looking for a low-cost addition saw a sport that needed no new building.
How the tournament works
Olympic squash will be singles, men and women, in a knockout draw. Matches follow the World Squash Federation's singles rules: best of five games, each game played to 11 points using point-a-rally scoring, and a game must be won by two clear points. The athlete quota is small, far below the size of a professional tour draw.
Egyptian players have dominated both the men's and the women's world rankings for much of the past decade. The United States has a growing program, and American women have reached the upper levels of the world rankings in the last decade, but no American has been a consistent challenger for a world title. For squash the 2028 Games are a debut, and the measure of success will be whether the matches draw a crowd and a television audience that justify bringing the sport back in 2032.
The most important thing inclusion does for squash is not a medal. It unlocks Olympic funding. National Olympic committees and governments steer money toward Olympic sports, and squash federations in many countries have lived without that money for their entire existence.
Cricket returns in Twenty20 form
Cricket was in the Olympics once. At Paris in 1900 a touring club side representing Great Britain played a team made up largely of British residents in France, in a single two-day match, and the British won. The game is remembered mostly as a curiosity.
The 2028 version is Twenty20, the shortest international format, where each side faces a maximum of 20 overs of six balls. A match takes around three hours. The tournament is planned with six teams per gender, which makes it one of the smallest fields at the Games and means the qualification route matters as much as the competition itself.
The reason cricket is in has little to do with the United States and almost everything to do with India. Cricket's audience in South Asia is enormous, and an Olympic cricket match carrying India's national team is expected to draw a television and digital following far beyond any other new sport. The IOC has been explicit that reaching new audiences was part of the appeal. The International Cricket Council, which spent years resisting the Olympics over calendar concerns, changed its position as the commercial value became clear.
Cricket's rules sit outside the scope of this site's USA section; our explainer on the cricket laws every fan should know covers them. For American readers the main points are that a Twenty20 innings ends when 20 overs are bowled or ten batters are out, and that the team that scores more runs wins. The United States has a national team and a professional league. How the six places per gender are allocated, including whether the host nation is guaranteed one, is set in the qualification system agreed by the ICC and the IOC rather than by host status alone.
What was dropped or reshaped for 2028
Additions are only half the 2028 story. Several sports either left the program or changed shape, and anyone following Team USA will notice the gaps.
| Sport or event | What happened for Los Angeles | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Breaking | Not included after its Paris 2024 debut | A host addition for Paris only; LA28 did not propose it |
| Modern pentathlon | Riding removed and replaced by an obstacle course | The federation dropped riding after the horse-welfare controversy at Tokyo |
| Lightweight rowing | Lightweight double sculls removed | Replaced by coastal rowing beach sprints |
| Coastal rowing | Beach sprint events added | New format chosen by World Rowing and the IOC |
| Boxing | Kept, under a new international federation | The IOC withdrew recognition from the old body and approved World Boxing |
| Weightlifting | Kept, after its place was made conditional | The IOC tied its place to governance and anti-doping reforms |
Breaking
Breaking had one Games. Paris proposed it as a host addition, it was staged at the Place de la Concorde in August 2024, and it did not appear on the Los Angeles list. The decision was made well before Paris, so it was not a verdict on how the event went. It was simply the logic of the host-addition system: no host proposal, no place.
Modern pentathlon without horses
Modern pentathlon used to mean fencing, swimming, riding, and a combined event of running and shooting. Riding used a horse the athlete had never ridden before, drawn by lot, and at Tokyo a German team coach struck a horse that refused to jump, which was broadcast worldwide. The governing body, the UIPM, voted to replace riding with obstacle racing, a timed course of walls, rings and climbing, before the IOC confirmed the sport for 2028.
Rowing's beach sprints
Lightweight rowing, raced in boats where crews must meet a body-weight limit, had been a fixture since 1996. For 2028 it is out, and coastal rowing beach sprints are in: a short run on the sand, a sprint out around a buoy in a sea-going boat, and a sprint back to finish on the beach. Southern California's coastline made it an easy fit.
New events inside the old sports
Not everything new for 2028 is a new sport. The IOC's event program, approved in 2025, changed what is contested inside sports that were already there, and some of those changes will matter more to American medal counts than flag football will.
Swimming gains three short races. The 50-meter backstroke, 50-meter breaststroke and 50-meter butterfly, long contested at world championships, become Olympic events for men and women. Until now the 50 freestyle was the only one-length race on the Olympic program. The United States has strong sprinters in all three strokes, so this is one of the most direct gains for Team USA anywhere on the program. How American swimmers earn those places is covered in our guide to the U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials.
Mixed events grow again. Golf adds a mixed team event to the men's and women's individual competitions, and mixed-gender relays and team events continue to spread across sports after their rapid growth since Tokyo.
Soccer changes balance. The women's tournament expands to 16 teams, while the men's tournament shrinks to 12, making 2028 the first Games where the women's soccer tournament is the bigger of the two. The men's event remains an under-23 tournament with a few overage players, a rule explained in our page on the Olympic soccer age limit.
More places for women than for men
The headline the IOC chose for the 2028 program was that it will be the first Olympics with more quota places for women than for men. Paris was the first Games with an exactly equal split. Los Angeles goes a step further, mainly through the women's soccer expansion and through quota adjustments in other team sports.
That claim refers to quota places, the number of athletes each sport may enter. The number who actually compete can differ slightly once qualification is finished, so the exact split will not be known until the entries close.
Why these five sports: audience, venues and money
Los Angeles promised a Games with no new permanent venues. The city would use stadiums, arenas and campuses that already exist, along with temporary structures, which is how it won the IOC's approval and why the organizing committee could present its budget as privately financed. Every sport added had to work inside that promise.
Venues that already exist
The selection fits the constraint closely. Baseball needs a ballpark, and the region has major league parks. Lacrosse sixes and flag football need a rectangular field with seating, of which the Los Angeles area has many, from college stadiums to the soccer-specific venues built for MLS. Squash needs a glass court inside an arena or a hall. Cricket was the hard one, because there is no international-standard cricket ground in Southern California. Organizers chose a temporary venue rather than a permanent build, consistent with the overall plan.
Softball took a different route. LA28 agreed to stage softball, along with canoe slalom, in Oklahoma City, which has hosted the NCAA Women's College World Series for decades and has a stadium built for the sport. It means part of the Los Angeles Olympics will happen more than 1,000 miles from Los Angeles, a precedent the IOC accepted because it uses existing venues instead of building new ones in Southern California.
The audience case
Each sport made a different commercial argument.
- Flag football brought the NFL's backing and an American youth base.
- Baseball and softball brought a large domestic fan base and strong markets in Japan, South Korea and Latin America.
- Cricket brought the South Asian audience, which the IOC has struggled to reach through any other sport.
- Lacrosse brought fast growth in American high schools and colleges, and an Indigenous heritage the Games could showcase.
- Squash asked for almost nothing in cost and had a decades-long case for fairness.
The cricket deal has the most money attached. Broadcasting rights for an Olympic tournament featuring India are expected to carry real value in South Asian markets, which is why the IOC's interest moved so quickly once the ICC committed. How broadcasting money is split in sports more widely is covered in our explainer on broadcasting rights.
The selection has an obvious weakness. Four of the five sports have their strongest fan bases in a narrow group of countries, which is the same criticism the IOC once used to keep squash and baseball out. The host-addition system tolerates that because it only commits for one Games.
What Team USA stands to gain in the added sports
The United States has a better start in the added sports than most hosts get from theirs. In at least two of the five, American teams start among the favorites.
| Event | American standing going in | Main rivals |
|---|---|---|
| Lacrosse, men | Long-time world power, with many world championship titles | Canada, the Haudenosaunee if they compete |
| Lacrosse, women | Among the strongest teams in the world | Canada, Australia |
| Softball | Three Olympic golds (1996, 2000, 2004) and two silvers | Japan |
| Flag football | Strong international record on both the men's and women's side | Mexico and several European teams |
| Baseball | Gold in 2000, silver in 2021, bronze in 1996 and 2008 | Japan, South Korea, Latin American teams |
| Squash | Developing; American women have reached the higher rankings | Egypt |
| Cricket | Host-country team, not a traditional power | India, Australia, England and others |
Where the edge is real
Lacrosse is the clearest case. The United States and Canada have dominated the sport internationally for decades, and the American college system produces a deep pool of players. Softball is close behind. American softball won the first three Olympic tournaments and lost the 2008 final to Japan, then lost to Japan again in the 2021 final in Yokohama. Japan is the rival for the gold medal, and the home field helps.
Flag football is harder to read. American teams have a strong record at IFAF world championships, but Mexico and other teams have beaten them, and the flag game's short format makes upsets easy. A single dropped pass or missed flag pull can decide a game.
Where it is not
Cricket is the outlier. The U.S. men's team surprised Pakistan at the Twenty20 World Cup in 2024, which got attention in the United States, but the American game is still small next to the powers of South Asia, Australia and England. In squash, Egypt's depth means an American medal would be a real upset. Baseball will depend almost entirely on whether major leaguers are released.
The full map of how the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee runs those teams is in our guide to the USOPC.
Sports that came and went before 2028
The Olympic program has always been less fixed than it looks. Early Games, especially Paris in 1900 and St. Louis in 1904, included whatever the organizers could stage alongside a world's fair, and dozens of events appeared once and disappeared.
| Sport | Olympic medal appearances | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Tug of war | 1900 to 1920 | Contested as part of athletics |
| Polo | 1900, 1908, 1920, 1924, 1936 | Removed after Berlin |
| Rugby | Union 1900-1924; sevens since 2016 | Returned in sevens form |
| Golf | 1900, 1904; again since 2016 | Gap of 112 years |
| Croquet | 1900 | One appearance |
| Motorboating | 1908 | One appearance |
| Karate | 2020 | Tokyo host addition only |
| Breaking | 2024 | Paris host addition only |
Golf and rugby, the 2016 returns
The modern comparison for the 2028 additions is golf and rugby sevens, both voted back at an IOC Session in Copenhagen in 2009 and first staged at Rio de Janeiro in 2016. Golf had not been played since 1904, rugby since 1924. Both were added to the core program, not as host additions, so both have stayed. Golf needed several Games to win over top professionals, many of whom skipped Rio. Rugby sevens took to the Olympics immediately and has become one of the better-attended sports at each Games.
The lesson for the LA28 five is mixed. Golf stayed because the IOC committed to it; host additions have no such commitment. A sport that makes its Olympic debut in Los Angeles is closer to karate's position in Tokyo than to golf's in Rio, unless it persuades the next hosts, or the IOC itself, that it belongs in the core.
Baseball's two exits
Baseball's removal in 2005 is the cautionary tale every 2028 sport has studied. It was voted off partly because major leaguers did not play, partly because its following was concentrated in a few regions, and partly over doping concerns at the time. Softball, which had none of the major league issue, went out in the same vote and paid the price for being paired with baseball. Both sports came back, and both left again after one Games. Neither has a guaranteed future after Los Angeles.
The Olympic qualification route for a sport once it is on the program, the standards and the quota places, is covered in our general explainer on Olympic qualification standards. Where those routes cross into American trials, our Team USA hub links every page in this section.