5 New Sports at LA 2028 Olympics, Explained

The Los Angeles 2028 Olympics will introduce five new sports on top of the regular Olympic programme: cricket, flag football, lacrosse, squash and baseball/softball. The Games run July 14 to 30, 2028. Cricket and lacrosse return for the first time in over a century, baseball/softball comes back after sitting out Paris 2024, and flag football and squash make their Olympic debut. It's the boldest expansion of the Summer Games in a generation.

That's LA's five-sport bet, all approved by the IOC at the same session in October 2023, all reflecting the host city's tastes and the sports world's commercial direction. Each of the five was chosen for a reason. Let's run through them, in the order they're likely to surprise you.

What are the new sports at LA 2028 Olympics?

The five new sports added to the LA 2028 Olympic programme are cricket, flag football, lacrosse, squash and baseball/softball. They were approved by the IOC Session in Mumbai in October 2023, on a host-city proposal from LA28. Each runs as an "additional sport" alongside the regular Olympic events, so the Games' total medal count grows for one Olympics without permanently expanding the programme.

And the choice is deeply intentional. Baseball, softball, lacrosse and flag football all sit at the heart of American sport, which puts US athletes in medal contention from day one of a Games on US soil. Cricket and squash add global reach: cricket dragging in the world's second-largest sport audience after football, squash giving a small-court racket sport its long-awaited Olympic stage. Five sports, five different jobs.

1. Cricket (returning after 128 years)

Cricket's last Olympic appearance was Paris 1900, a single men's match between Great Britain and France. At LA 2028 it returns in the Twenty20 (T20) format, a fast three-hour version of the sport ideal for Olympic scheduling. Six men's and six women's teams will compete, and qualification reflects the global T20 hierarchy rather than just the world's top countries.

For US audiences this is a big deal: the country's domestic T20 league, Major League Cricket, only started in 2023, and an Olympic medal arriving five years later puts US cricket on a sharp curve. T20 is also the format most likely to convert a baseball fan, given the three-hour runtime and the hit-and-run pace.

2. Flag football (Olympic debut)

Flag football, the non-contact version of American football where you pull a flag off the ball-carrier instead of tackling, will play five-a-side under International Federation of American Football (IFAF) rules. Two 20-minute halves, six teams per gender, played at Exposition Park Stadium in Los Angeles.

The Olympic debut is huge for the sport's global push. The NFL voted in 2025 to let active players represent their countries, opening the possibility of household names lining up under foreign flags. Flag football's domestic boom (you can read more in our flag vs tackle football comparison) means the US will start as the heavy favourite, but Mexico, Austria and Japan all have serious national programmes.

3. Lacrosse (returning after 120 years)

Lacrosse last appeared at the Olympics at London 1908, a two-team men's tournament. At LA 2028 it returns in a new six-a-side outdoor format called Sixes, designed by World Lacrosse to be faster, easier to broadcast and easier for new countries to compete in. It's neither the eleven-a-side traditional field game nor the six-a-side indoor box game; if you've never seen Sixes, our box vs field lacrosse comparison walks through the older two cousins it sits between.

The format question matters because it cuts to who can actually win. Field lacrosse is a US-Canada duopoly. Box lacrosse is similar. Sixes opens the door for smaller nations with developing programmes (Ireland, Japan, Israel) to be competitive. Whether World Lacrosse pulled that off will be the story of the tournament. The competition itself will share Exposition Park Stadium with flag football, an unusual two-sport venue arrangement designed to streamline logistics.

4. Squash (Olympic debut)

Squash's Olympic debut is overdue: the sport has bid four times before, lost each time, and finally got in for LA 2028 after a high-profile campaign from the World Squash Federation and big-name champions like Ramy Ashour and Nicol David. The Games will feature men's and women's singles only, played to PAR-11 scoring (point-a-rally to 11, win by 2) over the best of five games.

The venue is part of the storytelling: a glass court built on the Universal Studios Lot, now confirmed as the "Comcast Squash Center" after sponsorship was finalised in 2025. If you're new to squash, our squash vs racquetball explainer covers the rules, court and scoring in one read.

5. Baseball/Softball (returning after Tokyo 2020)

Baseball and softball return to the Olympics for the first time since Tokyo 2020 (played in 2021), having been left off the Paris 2024 programme. At LA 2028 the men's baseball tournament runs at Dodger Stadium with six teams competing; women's softball moves to Oklahoma City, the home of softball's most-loved US college tournament.

This one is a US storytelling win as much as a sporting one. The Dodgers' home becomes an Olympic venue, the US is the obvious favourite in men's baseball, and the women's softball draw is a chance to reset after a heartbreak loss to Japan in Tokyo. Expect the medal-round games to be among the hottest tickets of the entire Games.

All five new sports, at a glance

When does LA 2028 actually run?

The LA 2028 Olympic Games run from Friday, July 14 to Sunday, July 30, 2028. The Opening Ceremony is on July 14, shared between the LA Memorial Coliseum (host of the 1932 and 1984 Games) and SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, the first ever dual-venue opening. The Closing Ceremony lands at the LA Coliseum on July 30. The Paralympics follow from August 15 to August 27, 2028. So you have a two-week window of headline sport and a second window of Paralympic competition six weeks later.

Why these five (and what they have in common)

Read the picks as a chart and one pattern jumps out. Three of the five (baseball/softball, flag football, lacrosse) are deeply American sports the US is overwhelmingly favoured to win. One (cricket) is the world's second-biggest sport with a fast-growing American chapter and a massive global TV audience. One (squash) is a long-overdue debut that ticks the "small global federation, big international support" box. So LA's five-sport bet is half American medal-hunt, half global outreach, and it's exactly what you'd build if you wanted to maximise host-nation gold AND global broadcast hours in a single Games.

The bottom line: a five-sport bet, made in LA

Five new sports, three returns and two debuts, dropped onto one Olympics in one of the biggest sporting cities in the world. It's the largest single-Games additional-sports package in modern Olympic history, and it's been engineered to maximise both home-nation medals and global viewership for two weeks in July 2028. If you want the full LA 2028 picture, our Olympics 2028 hub tracks each sport's qualification, dates and venues as they're confirmed.

Frequently asked questions

What are the new sports at LA 2028 Olympics?

The five new sports added for LA 2028 are cricket (T20), flag football, lacrosse (Sixes format), squash and baseball/softball. They were approved by the IOC in October 2023 as additional host-city sports, on top of the regular Olympic programme.

When are the 2028 Olympics?

The LA 2028 Olympic Games run from Friday, July 14 to Sunday, July 30, 2028. The Paralympics follow from August 15 to August 27, 2028. The Opening Ceremony is shared between the LA Memorial Coliseum and SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, the first dual-venue opening ceremony in Olympic history.

Why is cricket returning to the Olympics?

Cricket's first and only Olympic appearance was Paris 1900, a one-off match between Great Britain and France. It returns at LA 2028 in the Twenty20 (T20) format with six men's and six women's teams, reflecting cricket's massive global audience and the United States' new domestic league, Major League Cricket, which launched in 2023.

What sports are making their Olympic debut at LA 2028?

Two of the five new sports are pure Olympic debuts: flag football (the non-contact American football format, played five-a-side) and squash (the indoor four-wall racket sport, played to PAR-11 best of five). The other three (cricket, lacrosse, baseball/softball) are all returns from earlier Olympic appearances.

Where will the new sports be played at LA 2028?

Confirmed venues are Exposition Park Stadium for flag football and lacrosse Sixes, the Comcast Squash Center on the Universal Studios Lot for squash, the purpose-built Fairgrounds Cricket Stadium at Fairplex in Pomona for cricket, Dodger Stadium for baseball, and Devon Park in Oklahoma City for softball.

How many teams are in each new sport?

Cricket and flag football each field six men's and six women's teams, lacrosse Sixes runs a similar six-team format per gender, and the baseball and softball tournaments each have six national teams. The format is deliberately small so the new sports fit cleanly into the 16-day Games calendar without crowding the headline events.