Olympic programme

Who decides, and under what rules

Authority over the Olympic programme runs through a specific chain, and naming any single actor as "the decider" is imprecise. Olympic Charter Rule 45 provides that the programme of the Games is established by the IOC Executive Board and approved by the IOC Session — the full membership — with the Charter's Bye-law to that rule most recently modified at the 143rd IOC Session on 30 January 2025. The Charter sets deadlines for that approval of not later than seven years before a Summer Games and six years before a Winter Games, though this page could not obtain the Charter's exact rule text to quote verbatim and states the substance rather than a quotation.^[1] Day-to-day analysis and recommendations come from the IOC Olympic Programme Commission, which reviews sports, disciplines and events for both Summer and Winter Games and reports to the Executive Board and Session; the Commission and a newer Olympic Programme Working Group, formed by IOC President Kirsty Coventry in 2025, are both chaired by Karl Stoss.^[2]

The Executive Board's own power expanded in 2021. On 8 August 2021, at the close of the Tokyo Session, IOC members approved a Charter amendment letting the Executive Board suspend a sport from the programme without a full Session vote where its governing federation fails to comply with Board decisions or "acts in a manner likely to tarnish the reputation of the Olympic movement" — outright removal of a sport still requires a Session vote. The amendment followed the IOC's conflict with the International Weightlifting Federation over governance and doping failures, after the IOC had threatened to drop weightlifting from Paris 2024 absent reform.^[3] IOC Vice-President John Coates at the time: "In the recent past, the IOC has been confronted with situations raising serious concerns regarding the governance of certain international federations."^[4]

The Agenda 2020 system (2014–2028): a stable core plus host-proposed additional sports

Olympic Agenda 2020, a 40-recommendation reform package (“20+20”) dated 18 November 2014, was approved by the full membership at the 127th IOC Session in Monte Carlo in December 2014.^[5] [6] Recommendation 9 set hard caps on Games size — approximately 10,500 athletes, 5,000 accredited coaches and support staff, and 310 events for the Summer Games, and roughly 2,900 athletes, 2,000 support staff and 100 events for the Winter Games. Recommendation 10 shifted review toward events within those caps and, in the single most important sentence on this page, let host organising committees "make a proposal for the inclusion of one or more additional events on the Olympic programme for that edition of the Olympic Games" — note "for that edition": a host-proposed sport carries no tenure and does not automatically return at the next Games.^[5]

Tokyo 2020 tested the new system first. Twenty-six international federations applied for additional-event inclusion in a window opening 8 May 2015; nine were shortlisted on 22 June 2015 — described as "eight sports" in most coverage because baseball and softball count as one sport with two disciplines, a sport/discipline distinction that recurs throughout this page. On 3 August 2016 the 129th IOC Session in Rio approved five of those sports for Tokyo 2020: baseball/softball, karate, skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing.^{[7] [8] [9]} Paris 2024 illustrates the no-tenure rule directly: the IOC Executive Board confirmed only breaking, skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing on 7 December 2020, alongside proposals to add ocean rowing and parkour that were rejected outright. Karate and baseball/softball, both contested at Tokyo 2020, did not return — the World Karate Federation publicly expressed disappointment, noting karate had barely had the chance to prove itself as an Olympic sport before losing its place again.^{[10] [11] [12]} Skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing are the only three of the original Tokyo five to graduate into the LA28 standing programme (next section) — the cleanest evidence that a host-proposed sport can earn a lasting place, and that most do not.^[7]

LA28: five additional sports, and the rest of the programme

The 139th IOC Session in Beijing approved a 28-sport LA28 Initial Sports Programme on 3 February 2022, built around the sports already on the standing programme. Boxing, weightlifting and modern pentathlon were excluded from that initial list, each given a path back if their federations — the IBA, the IWF and the UIPM — satisfactorily addressed governance concerns the Executive Board had specified in December 2021.^[13] By August 2022 a shortlist of nine sports competed for additional-sport status: breaking, baseball/softball, flag football, lacrosse, karate, kickboxing, squash, cricket and motorsport. Four of the nine ultimately lost — breaking, karate, kickboxing and motorsport — the best-documented recent set of failed campaigns.^[14]

On 16 October 2023 the 141st IOC Session, meeting in Mumbai, approved LA28's proposal of five additional sports — cricket, flag football, lacrosse, squash and baseball/softball — reportedly by 88 votes to 2, with all five voted as a single package rather than individually. Cricket returns after 123 years in T20 format with six-team men's and women's tournaments; flag football (five-a-side, non-contact) and squash both make their Olympic debut, and lacrosse returns in a six-a-side format.^[15] Separately, the three provisionally excluded sports were restored across 2023–2025: modern pentathlon was confirmed at that same 16 October 2023 Session after the UIPM replaced its riding discipline with a head-to-head obstacle-course sprint, adopted by an 83% vote at the federation's own November 2022 Congress — a sport reforming itself to satisfy programme criteria, the same pattern seen with wrestling in 2013 (next section).^[16] Boxing followed after the IOC granted World Boxing provisional recognition on 26 February 2025; the 144th Session confirmed boxing on the LA28 programme on 20 March 2025.^[17]

The Executive Board confirmed the full LA28 medal-event programme and athlete quota on 9 April 2025 — a separate, later decision from the sports-approval vote, and conflating the two produces wrong dates. LA28 will stage 351 medal events, 22 more than Paris 2024, with 10,500 athletes on the initial programme plus up to 700 additional places (one report gives 698) for the five additional sports; for the first time, every team sport will field at least as many women's teams as men's teams — football expands to 16 women's teams against 12 men's, while water polo and 3x3 basketball reach exact parity at 12 teams each.^[18] [19] Breaking is not on the LA28 programme: an LA28 spokesperson said the committee "proposed a holistic and balanced package of new sports" rather than a rejection of breaking's merits, and the World DanceSport Federation itself noted breaking was not the first sport to appear at one Games and not the next, citing baseball/softball and karate as precedent.^[10]

The Winter programme: Milano Cortina 2026 and Alpes 2030

The Winter Games follow the same propose-then-approve chain. The IOC Session unanimously approved ski mountaineering for Milano Cortina 2026 on 20 July 2021, on a proposal that had originated with the Milano Cortina organising committee and been forwarded by the Executive Board the previous month — the Winter Games' first host-proposed additional sport under the Agenda 2020 system.^[20] The sport actually contested at Milano Cortina, in Bormio on 19 and 21 February 2026, was smaller than what had been approved: three medal events and 36 athletes rather than the five events and 48 athletes originally proposed, a reduction this page could not date precisely beyond narrowing it to sometime between July 2021 and mid-2022 — a genuine, sourced illustration that approving a sport is not the same as approving its final event list.^{[20] [21] [22]} Milano Cortina 2026 overall staged 116 medal events across 16 disciplines in 8 sports, 6–22 February 2026, with women's participation rising to 47% from 45.4% at Beijing 2022.^[22] [23]

For Alpes 2030, the IOC Executive Board proposed expanding ski mountaineering to five events across two disciplines on 11 June 2026, and IOC members approved it on 25 June 2026; Olympic Programme Commission chair Karl Stoss cited the sport's "strong presence in Alpine regions," and the IOC noted it is "not guaranteed to remain beyond 2030" — the Winter Games' own restatement of the rule that a host-proposed sport carries no tenure.^[24] [25] The Executive Board approved the full Alpes 2030 event programme in early July 2026: 126 events across 17 disciplines in 8 sports and 3,046 athletes split evenly by gender, making Alpes 2030 the first gender-equal Olympic Winter Games. Three new disciplines were added — freeride skiing and snowboarding, a team figure-skating event called Synchro9, and the expanded ski mountaineering.^[26] [27]

The same decision holds the programme's most significant recent removal: Nordic combined, contested at every Winter Olympics since 1924, was dropped from the Alpes 2030 programme — the only Winter discipline removed. The stated grounds were narrow success and low interest: only five National Olympic Committees had won Nordic combined medals across the previous four Winter Games, and the discipline ranked lowest of all Winter disciplines on 11 of 14 popularity indicators the IOC assessed. Removal from one edition is not permanent expulsion — Nordic combined remains eligible for Utah 2034 and continues at the 2028 Youth Olympic Games.^[26] [27]

Historical additions and removals, and documented failed campaigns

The clearest historical removal predates Agenda 2020 entirely. On 8 July 2005, at the 117th IOC Session in Singapore, members voted to drop both baseball and softball from the programme effective after Beijing 2008, while the other 26 sports were retained; this page could not verify the exact vote tallies. Golf, rugby, squash, karate and roller sports were on a waiting list to replace them. In the most instructive documented failed campaign found for this page, squash and karate each won more than 51% of a secret-ballot vote to be added, but the follow-on amendment to the Charter's list of Olympic sports needed a two-thirds majority and fell short — the net 2005 outcome was two sports dropped and none added, a simple majority proving not to be enough.^[28] [29] Golf and rugby sevens succeeded four years later: the 121st IOC Session in Copenhagen approved rugby sevens (81–8) and golf (63–26) for the 2016 programme on 9 October 2009, each sport's first Olympic appearance since 1924 and 1904 respectively.^[30]

The single clearest case of a sport saving its own place through reform is wrestling. On 12 February 2013 the IOC Executive Board voted to eliminate wrestling from the programme entirely, with Rio 2016 to have been its final appearance. Wrestling's federation, FILA — later rebranded United World Wrestling — responded over the following months by electing Nenad Lalović president, expanding women's wrestling to six weight classes, simplifying competition rules, increasing female representation in leadership, and strengthening anti-doping. At the 125th IOC Session in Buenos Aires on 8 September 2013, wrestling was reinstated for 2020 and 2024 in a single round of voting against baseball/softball and squash, 49 votes to 24 to 22. Lalović himself later joined the IOC as a member in 2015 and its Executive Board in 2018 — the same reform-to-survive pattern later followed by modern pentathlon (previous section).^[31]

A long list of federations have applied and lost, most visibly at the Tokyo 2020 shortlisting stage, where 21 of the 26 applicant federations were cut on 22 June 2015 without ever reaching a Session vote: air sports, American football, billiards, bowls, bridge, chess, DanceSport, floorball, flying disc, korfball, netball, orienteering, polo, racquetball, sumo, tug of war, underwater sports and waterski/wakeboard among them. Bowling, roller sports and wushu are a distinct case: all three survived that first cut as part of the nine shortlisted, then fell away before the final proposal — shortlisted is not the same as proposed. Netball alone is reported in academic commentary to have applied and been turned back on four separate occasions, though that count and its stated cause are the authors' own characterisation rather than an IOC statement.^[7]

The 2026 reset: “Fit for the Future” and the discipline-based methodology

On 11 June 2026 the IOC Executive Board, under President Kirsty Coventry, proposed the most significant change to programme methodology since Agenda 2020, under the banner "Fit for the Future": evaluation moves from whole sports to individual disciplines, defined as "one or more events within a sport that require a dedicated field of play or a significant modification to a shared field of play."^[32] [36] The 146th IOC Session — an Extraordinary Session held in Lausanne — approved the new methodology on 25 June 2026, committing the IOC to "maintain a capped, curated sports programme — balancing athlete value, global appeal, cost and complexity to ensure viable and affordable Games." That Session approved the rules of evaluation only, not decisions on individual sports; actual Brisbane 2032 programme decisions are expected in a window running from the fourth quarter of 2026 into early 2027, later than the seven-years-before deadline the Charter otherwise specifies, which the IOC has said it postponed for Brisbane.^{[33] [34] [36]}

Coventry has framed the change as reclaiming control after a period of unchecked growth: "We feel we need to regain the control of the program and we're the leaders, this is our product," and, on size, "I don't think in Brisbane we're going to see 36 sports... we can't continue to just get bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger." A working figure under discussion — reported, not decided — is 27 sports and roughly 9,599 athletes for Brisbane, down from 28 sports at Paris 2024 and 36 at LA28; disciplines are being assessed against venue cost, athlete numbers, broadcast potential and ticket revenue.^[34] [36] Commentary has identified squash, flag football and lacrosse as sports unlikely to continue to Brisbane, squash's exposure attributed to its need for dedicated venue space and a LA28 quota already reduced by roughly half to 32 athletes — but no 2032 programme decision had been taken as of the most recent date checked, and this should be read as informed speculation rather than an IOC decision.^[35]

One question the available sources leave genuinely open, and which this page does not resolve: whether the host-proposal right created by Agenda 2020 Recommendation 10 — the mechanism behind cricket, breaking, ski mountaineering and every other host-proposed sport described above — survives the 2026 discipline-based methodology at all, is modified by it, or lapses. The clearest available evidence points toward continuity: ski mountaineering was approved as an "additional sport" for Alpes 2030 after the new methodology had already been adopted. But no IOC statement located for this page directly addresses whether the host-proposal mechanism itself continues into the Brisbane 2032 cycle and beyond, and this page states only what the evidence shows rather than assuming the older system has ended.^[24] [33]