New Sports to be Added to the 2028 Olympics

As the Paris 2024 Summer Games wrap up this year, fellow Olympians and Olympic fans will have to wait another four years for the Summer Olympic Games to come around full cycle. By that time, the games will be taking place in Los Angeles, California, where the venue has had plenty of success in the past.

For the 2028 LA Games, there will be several new sports added to the mix, which is why in this article, we’ll be discussing some of the new additions coming to the next Olympics. Specifically, we’ll touch upon each of the new sports to be added to the 2028 Olympics and how they plan on being implemented.

Cricket

The long-awaited, incredibly popular game of Cricket is now being introduced to the 2028 Summer Games in LA. Fans and players overseas in areas like Australia, India, New Zealand, the U.K. and the West Indies have been waiting for this moment, and it’s truly surprising to see how long it took for Cricket to be added to the list of sports considering it’s one of the most watched sports in the world. Last appearing in the Olympics in the early 1990s, it has take a while for cricket to make a return, but we will get to see the T20 format of the game on display in Los Angeles.

Lacrosse

Coming up next as one of the five new sports to be added to the 2028 Olympics is none other than the American-born sport known as lacrosse. After creating its first Major League in the U.S. as recently as 2000, lacrosse has intensely grown in popularity across the entirety of America. Now, for the 2028 LA Olympics, the ancient and famed sport of “Stickball” has a spot on the list of upcoming games in its well-known Sixes format. It took decades to put lacrosse back on the Olympic schedule, but having the Games back Stateside has put this sport back on the pedestal.

Baseball & Softball

With such a high viewership in the United States, you would’ve expected both baseball and softball to already be implemented in the prestigious Olympic Games. Even though we generally see baseball as an all-male sport and softball as an all-female sport with different rulesets (and pitching styles), they share virtually the same aspects, both of which are extremely popular in countries such as Japan, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, South Korea and Puerto Rico. With an exciting lineup of nations waiting to qualify for an already very competitive sport, it’s only appropriate that baseball and softball make an Olympic return to LA.

Squash

Despite a lot of pressure over the years, this sport has never appeared in any Olympic games throughout history, so it’s exciting to announce that squash is one of the additional sports coming to the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles. Although the game of squash was first invented around the year 1830, it has never earned the admiration and approval of the Olympic Summer Games until now. Squash will be introduced to the 2028 LA Summer Games with a first-to-11-point format where the winning player will need to score a two-point advantage to win. The first player to win three games wins the match! 

Flag Football

Last but not least (for Americans especially) is the famed game of flag football, a less physical version of its American-bred predecessor. With leagues such as the NFL already in place generating mass amounts of revenue in the USA, it will be very interesting to see how the competition pans out, and how other countries can compare to a slightly altered version of the popular US sport. Either way, we’ll have to wait another four years before seeing flag football make it’s debut on the biggest stage.