LA28 Olympics: What to Expect From the Los Angeles Games [2026]

The 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles — LA28 — will be the third time Los Angeles has hosted the Games (after 1932 and 1984) and the first to use exclusively existing venues rather than building new Olympic infrastructure. Here is the honest preview of what to expect from a Games that's designed very differently from recent editions.

The No-New-Venues Model

LA28's organizing committee has committed to using existing venues rather than purpose-building new facilities: SoFi Stadium for the opening ceremony, the Rose Bowl for football, Crypto.com Arena for basketball, the LA Memorial Coliseum for athletics, and a range of existing sports facilities across the Los Angeles metropolitan area. This approach directly addresses the "Olympic white elephant" problem — the stadiums and venues built for recent Olympics in Athens, Beijing, Rio, and others that became expensive-to-maintain underutilized facilities after the Games ended.

The practical implications for the Games experience: venues are further apart than in a purpose-built Olympic park (Athens, London) or a geographically concentrated city (Paris 2024 used its urban density brilliantly). Los Angeles's notorious traffic and geographic sprawl creates logistical challenges for spectators moving between venues that the organizing committee's free Games-period public transit plan aims to address, with varying levels of skepticism from observers familiar with LA's transit realities.

New Sports and Format Changes

LA28 will include several sports added specifically to appeal to younger American audiences: cricket (T20 format, for the first time since 1900), flag football (non-tackle American football, with the NFL providing significant support and promotion), squash (which has sought Olympic inclusion for years), and lacrosse (in the Sixes format). These additions reflect the IOC's ongoing effort to update the Olympic program to include sports with younger demographic appeal — the same logic that brought skateboarding, BMX freestyle, and sport climbing to recent Olympics.

The established sports remain the core: athletics (track and field), swimming, gymnastics, and basketball will be the most-watched events by both domestic and international audiences. The American home advantage in basketball, swimming, and athletics — sports where the US has historically been strongest — will shape the medal table narrative throughout the Games.

The Host City Advantage Question

Host nations historically perform better at home Olympics — a consistent finding across the historical data that's attributed to crowd support, home environment familiarity, and the additional funding and attention domestic sports programs receive in the years leading to hosting. The US's home advantage in LA28 will be felt most clearly in sports where American performance is close to international competitors; in swimming and athletics, where American talent depth already ensures strong performance, the home advantage adds to already strong baselines.

My honest take: The no-new-venues model is the right approach for sustainable Olympic hosting. LA's transit limitations for venue-hopping are a genuine concern. Flag football and cricket additions are commercially motivated but may produce genuinely compelling competitions. The home advantage will favor the US most in swimming and athletics.