2028 Summer Olympics facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Games of the XXXIV Olympiad

One of several emblems of the 2028 Summer Olympics
Host city	Los Angeles, United States
Motto	Together we create the future
Opening	July 14, 2028
Closing	July 30, 2028
Stadium	Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum SoFi Stadium
Summer
← Paris 2024 Brisbane 2032 →
Winter
← Milano-Cortina 2026 TBD 2030 →

The 2028 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXXIV Olympiad, and commonly known as Los Angeles 2028 or LA28, is an upcoming international multi-sport event scheduled to take place from July 14 to 30, 2028 in and around Los Angeles, California, United States.

Los Angeles had originally bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics. However, after multiple withdrawals that left only Los Angeles and Paris in contention, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) approved a process to concurrently award the 2024 and 2028 Summer Olympics to the two remaining candidates, with Los Angeles preferred as the 2028 host. Los Angeles was formally awarded the Games at the 131st IOC Session in Lima, Peru, on September 13, 2017. They will mark the fifth Summer Olympics, and ninth Olympics overall, to be hosted by the United States. Having previously hosted the Summer Olympics in 1932 and 1984, Los Angeles will become the third three-time host city after London and Paris, and the first city in Americas ever to do so.

The IOC has provisionally removed boxing, modern pentathlon, and weightlifting from the program of 28 "core" Olympic events, and has proposed the promotion of skateboarding, sport climbing, and surfing—which were included in the programs of the 2020 and 2024 Games as optional sports—as their replacement. The organizing committee has also proposed the addition of baseball/softball, cricket, flag football, lacrosse, and squash as optional sports, with flag football and squash making their Olympic debut, and cricket and lacrosse returning for the first time since the 1900s.

Bidding process

On September 16, 2015, the International Olympic Committee announced the candidature process and the five candidate cities for the 2024 Games: Budapest, Hamburg, Los Angeles, Paris, and Rome. Budapest, Hamburg, and Rome eventually withdrew, leaving only Los Angeles and Paris. A similar situation had already occurred during the bidding for the 2022 Winter Olympics when Krakow, Lviv, Oslo, and Stockholm withdrew, resulting in a two-way decision between Beijing, China, and Almaty, Kazakhstan, with Beijing ultimately declared the winner. On April 3, 2017, at the IOC convention in Denmark, Olympic officials met with bid committees from Los Angeles and Paris to discuss the possibility of naming two winners in the competition to host the 2024 Summer Games.

After these withdrawals, the IOC Executive Board met in Lausanne, Switzerland, on June 9, 2017, to discuss the 2024 and 2028 bid processes. The IOC formally proposed electing the 2024 and 2028 host cities at the same time in 2017, a proposal that an Extraordinary IOC Session approved on July 11, 2017, in Lausanne. The IOC set up a process where the Los Angeles and Paris 2024 bid committees and the IOC, held meetings in July 2017 to decide which city would host in each of the two years.

Following the decision to award the 2024 and 2028 Games simultaneously, Paris was understood to be preferred for the 2024 Games. On July 31, 2017, the IOC announced Los Angeles as the sole candidate for 2028, with $1.8 billion of additional funding from the IOC, allowing Paris to be confirmed as the host for 2024. On August 11, 2017, Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to approve the bid. On September 11, 2017, Los Angeles received formal approval from the IOC's evaluation commission. On September 13, 2017, Los Angeles was formally awarded the 2028 Games following a unanimous vote by the IOC. The IOC praised the LA bid for using a record-breaking number of existing and temporary facilities and for relying entirely on corporate funding.

On October 16, 2017, Los Angeles 2028 received official support from the state of California. On August 29, 2018, Olympic officials arrived for a two-day visit that included meetings with local organizers and a tour of the city's newest venues. At the time, LMU and LA Times polls suggested that more than 88% of Angelenos were in favor of the city's hosting the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. In March 2023, however, a poll conducted by Suffolk University and the LA Times indicated a decrease in approval of the Olympic Games since Los Angeles won the Olympic bid, with only 57% of Angelenos believing the Olympics will be good for the city.

2028 Summer Olympics
bidding results

City	Nation	Votes
Los Angeles	United States	Unanimous

Development and preparations

Venue construction and renovations

Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum

Interior view of SoFi Stadium at Hollywood Park

While most host cities have between six and seven years to prepare for the Olympic Games, Los Angeles will get an additional four, giving the city eleven years. The Los Angeles bid relied on a majority of existing venues; other venues that are already under construction or were planned regardless of the Games. BMO Stadium, which opened in 2018 as the home of Major League Soccer's Los Angeles FC, will host football (soccer) and several events in athletics. SoFi Stadium, which opened in 2020 as the home of the NFL's Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers, will host the main opening ceremony, football, and archery.

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum underwent a major renovation and restoration program from 2017 to 2019. A new press box, loge boxes, and club seats were installed. This reduced stadium capacity from 93,607 to 78,467. As the athletics venue, future renovations include the re-installation of an athletics track.

The Los Angeles Clippers are building a new basketball arena in Inglewood near SoFi Stadium, called Intuit Dome, which began construction in September 2021 and is expected to be completed in 2024. Team owner Steve Ballmer stated during its groundbreaking that he hoped that it could be included in the Games.

Crypto.com Arena will undergo renovations which will be completed by 2024, four years prior to when the arena hosts the Olympic basketball competition.

Budget

In April 2019, the estimated cost of the Games was assessed as being approximately $6.88 billion with all the money coming from the private sector, although the Los Angeles city council and state of California legislators have agreed to serve as a "financial backstop." The organizers adjusted the budget for inflation after LA, which originally bid for the 2024 Games, agreed to wait four more years.

The City of Los Angeles is the lead public guarantor, committing to spend up to $250 million to cover shortfalls. In 2016, the California legislature took action so that the Governor is empowered to negotiate the next $250 million in public backup, but only after the city backup money has been used first. LA 2024 also agreed to purchase a wide range of insurance policies, including natural disaster, terrorism, event cancellation, as well as reduced ticket sales. The games are expected to generate as much as they cost, with $2.5 billion coming in through sponsorships and nearly $2 billion earned through ticket sales. Average ticket prices for the games will range between $13 and $457 (in 2016 dollars).

The federal government will designate the Olympics a National Special Security Event (NSSE) in which the US Secret Service heads a single chain of command. The US federal government will also cover the cost of security, with an agreement signed by the LA organizing committee and Department of Homeland Security in February 2020, but it will not be involved in the Games' funding, covering only the aforementioned security costs.

Venues

Under present IOC policy, venues with corporate naming rights will not be allowed to use their sponsored name during the Olympics.

Sports parks

There will be four "sports parks" throughout the city to host events at existing, temporary, and planned venues, as well as venues already under construction. The most prominent of the four locations will be the Downtown Sports Park, which will host events at various venues in Downtown Los Angeles. The Downtown Sports Park will host events including swimming, diving, football, badminton, road cycling, fencing, taekwondo and basketball at Los Angeles City Hall and Grand Park, the Los Angeles Convention Center, Crypto.com Arena, Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and the campus of the University of Southern California. In addition to sporting events, the Downtown Sports Park will also host the Main Press Center, Media Village, and Olympic Family Hotels, and serve as the venue for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies.

Additional sports parks include the Valley Sports Park, South Bay Sports Park, and the Long Beach Sports Park.

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  Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Olympic Cauldron

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  BMO Stadium

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  Night view of Crypto.com Arena

Downtown Sports Park

Various venues in Downtown Los Angeles.

Valley Sports Park

The Valley Sports Park host events at temporary venues in the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Center in the San Fernando Valley.

South Bay Sports Park

Dignity Health Sports Park Center

The South Bay Sports Park will be located on the campus of California State University, Dominguez Hills in Carson, California.

Long Beach Sports Park

Long Beach

The Long Beach Sports Park will host events along the Long Beach waterfront in Long Beach, California.

Westside

Various venues in the Westside of Los Angeles, CA.

Riviera Country Club

The Kia Forum

Southern California venues

Various venues in the Greater Los Angeles area.

UCLA student housing site of the Olympic Village

Potential football venues

The Rose Bowl

According to the initial bid book for the Los Angeles 2024 Olympics, football venues are to be situated within Los Angeles Metropolitan Area and other main cities of California. The organizing committee's responsibility is to choose from four to six venues to host the tournament. According to the official website of the local organizing committee, eight venues are under consideration, all within California.

Potential venues in Los Angeles County

• Rose Bowl, Pasadena (92,542 capacity) – 3 group matches, quarterfinals, semifinals and women's final
• SoFi Stadium, Inglewood (72,000) – 3 group matches, quarterfinals, semifinals and men's final
• BMO Stadium, Exposition Park (22,000) – 8 group matches

Potential venues in the San Francisco Bay area

• Levi's Stadium, Santa Clara (68,500) – 5 group matches, quarterfinals, and men's bronze medal match
• California Memorial Stadium, Berkeley (63,000) – 8 group matches
• Stanford Stadium, Stanford (50,000) – 5 group matches, quarterfinals and women's bronze medal match
• PayPal Park, San Jose (20,000) – 8 group matches

Potential venues in San Diego County

• Snapdragon Stadium, San Diego (35,000) – 8 group matches

The Games

Sports

For the first time, surfing was included in the IOC's list of 28 core sports for the Olympics after having been an optional sport at the previous two Games.

The program of the Summer Olympics consists of 28 mandatory "core" sports that persist between Games, and up to six optional sports proposed by the organizing committee in order to improve local interest, provided that the total number of participants does not exceed 10,500 athletes. The number of 'core' sports proposed was raised to 30 with the reintroduction of weightlifting and modern pentathlon, while ultimately the organizing committee proposed five optional sports; baseball/softball, cricket, flag football, lacrosse and squash. One further 'core' sport, boxing, may be readmitted at a future date.

New sports

On December 9, 2021, the IOC executive board proposed that skateboarding, sport climbing, and surfing—which successfully debuted as optional sports at the 2020 Summer Olympics, and are expected to return in the same capacity in 2024—be promoted to the core program of the 2028 Summer Olympics to replace boxing, modern pentathlon, and weightlifting. These three sports were provisionally dropped from the program pending the resolution of governance issues, with the IOC setting a deadline of 2023:

• The International Boxing Association (IBA) has faced ongoing governance issues, which resulted in boxing at the 2020 Summer Olympics being overseen by an external task force. These concerns increased following the election of Umar Kremlev as its president in December 2020, due to his extensive ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin. A competing governing body known as World Boxing was established in April 2023 by a consortium of national federations, and the IOC stripped the IBA of its status as recognized governing body for boxing in June 2023.
• The International Weightlifting Federation has faced issues with doping and governance (resulting in weightlifting being considered "provisional" for the 2024 Summer Olympics).
• The Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne (UIPM) must also finalize and seek approval for their proposed replacement of show jumping in the modern pentathlon with obstacle course racing.

In August 2022, the LA organizing committee shortlisted nine proposed sports for consideration as discretionary events for these Olympics, including baseball/softball, breakdance, cricket, flag football, karate, kickboxing, lacrosse, squash, and motorsport. On October 9, 2023, the organizing committee announced that they had officially submitted baseball/softball, cricket, flag football, lacrosse, and squash for consideration by the IOC.

The IOC also announced the intention to agree the inclusion of weightlifting and modern pentathlon following reforms by both sports' governing bodies. The question of boxing's inclusion was held over in acknowledgement of the derecognition of the governing body, the International Boxing Association. These proposals are to be ratified at the 141st IOC Session in Mumbai, India.

Ceremonies

In January 2017, it was reported that the bid committee had proposed holding the opening and closing ceremonies at both SoFi Stadium and the historic Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, in an acknowledgement of its role in the 1932 and 1984 Olympics. The plans called the final leg of the torch relay to be ceremonially launched from the Coliseum, a simulcast of the opening ceremony proper at SoFi Stadium for those in attendance, and the ceremonial re-lighting of the historic Olympic cauldron at the stadium once the cauldron is lit in Inglewood. The closing ceremony would be held in reverse, with opening segments at SoFi Stadium, and the official protocol held at the Coliseum. The proposal is unprecedented and would mark the first time two major venues are featured in the opening and closing ceremonies. The final plan is pending per IOC approval.

See also

In Spanish: Juegos Olímpicos de Los Ángeles 2028 para niños