The 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles will feature an expanded program with new mixed-gender team events in several marquee sports, including golf and gymnastics.
The International Olympic Committee announced the new mixed-gender events Wednesday when it unveiled the entire sport program for the 2028 Summer Games. They will help bring a team twist to Olympic golf, which previously only featured individual men’s and women’s competition, and a new dimension to gymnastics, where team competitions at the Olympics had been divided by gender.
The IOC will also debut a 4×100 mixed-gender relay in track and field, to go along with the mixed 4×400 that has been contested at the past two editions of the Summer Olympics.
‘The mixed events are a real true embodiment of gender equality − men and women competing in the same team, on the same field of play for their country,’ IOC sports director Kit McConnell said in a news conference. ‘We’ve seen the real success of these (mixed-gender events). They bring something incredibly special for the athletes involved.’
Mixed-gender team events are rare in both golf and gymnastics, but not entirely unheard of. In golf, the Grant Thornton Invitational has been contested since 2023 and features 16 teams, each made up of one player each from the PGA and LPGA Tours. And in gymnastics, there is the DTB Pokal Mixed Cup in which men and women compete on mixed-gender teams.
McConnell said the International Gymnastics Federation must finalize the format of the Olympic mixed event by the end of May.
As part of its announcement, the IOC also confirmed the number of teams and athletes who will compete in the five sports that are being added to the Olympic program for the Los Angeles Games: Baseball/softball, cricket, flag football, lacrosse and squash.
The four team sports being added will each include six men’s teams and six women’s teams, while squash will include 16 men and 16 women competing individually.
In flag football, which is perhaps the most intriguing of the additions, each team will consist of 10 athletes. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said last week that the league and players’ union will likely make a decision in the next few months on whether NFL players can compete at the Games.
Among the other big changes to the sports program for Los Angeles:
- For the first time in Olympic history, the soccer competition will feature more women’s teams (16) than men’s (12). McConnell attributed this change, in part, to the United States’ standing as ‘the home of the highest levels of popularity’ of the women’s game.
- Swimming will add six new medal events in the sport’s shortest distance, 50 meters. In addition to the 50-meter freestyle, which is currently an Olympic event, Los Angeles will also have the 50-meter backstroke, 50-meter breastroke and 50-meter butterfly.
- There will be 12 teams per gender in 3×3 basketball, a significant increase from the 2024 Paris Olympics, which featured eight. The 32 new quota spots in 3×3 basketball were taken directly from breaking, which was an Olympic sport for the first and likely only time in Paris last summer.
McConnell said the core sports program for the Los Angeles Olympics will feature the same number of quota spots as the 2024 Paris Olympics: 10,500. The five new sports will add 698 athletes, on top of the quota.
The IOC announced that women will make up 50.5% of the athlete pool at the 2028 Games. And, for the first time, each team sport will have the same number of women’s teams as men’s teams, or more.
Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on social media @tomschad.bsky.social.