Olympic sports are sports that are contested in the Summer Olympic Games and Winter Olympic Games. The 2024 Summer Olympics included 32 sports; the 2022 Winter Olympics included seven sports. Each Olympic sport is represented at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) by an international governing body called an International Federation (IF).
The 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo saw the introduction of four new sports, with karate, skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing making their Olympic debuts. Breakdancing made its debut at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, and ski mountaineering made its debut at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy. Flag football and squash will make their debuts at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, while cricket and lacrosse will return after long absences.
Early history and scope From the 18th century onwards, researchers took a greater interest in the value of traditional games in elucidating cultural values and identities. The modern Olympic Games, founded by Pierre de Coubertin on the basis of "All games, all nations", were influenced by this thinking; at the 1904 Summer Olympics, de Coubertin arranged "Anthropological Days", which allowed athletes from Asia, Africa, and South America to demonstrate their regional games. However, the 1904 organizers marginalized this aspect of the Olympics, and it quickly faded away after a few years, with mainly only Western sports being played.
Olympic sports definitions The International Olympic Committee (IOC) considers an Olympic sport to comprise all disciplines governed by an international sports federation. A discipline is defined as one or more events within a sport requiring either a dedicated field of play or a significant modification of another discipline's field of play, generally involving a separate group of athletes. For example, aquatics is a summer Olympic sport that includes six disciplines: swimming, artistic swimming, diving, water polo, open water swimming, and high diving (a non-Olympic discipline), all of which are governed at the international level by World Aquatics. Skating is a winter Olympic sport represented by the International Skating Union, and includes three IOC-recognized disciplines: figure skating, speed skating and short-track speed skating. The sport with the largest number of Olympic disciplines is skiing, with six: alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, ski jumping, snowboarding, freestyle skiing and freeriding.
Other notable multi-discipline sports are gymnastics (artistic, rhythmic, and trampoline), cycling (road, track, mountain, and BMX), volleyball (indoors and beach), wrestling (freestyle and Greco-Roman), canoeing (flatwater and slalom), and bobsleigh (includes skeleton). The disciplines listed here are only those contested in the Olympics—gymnastics has two non-Olympic disciplines, while cycling and wrestling have three each.
The IOC definition of a "discipline" may differ from that used by an international federation. For example, the IOC considers artistic gymnastics a single discipline, but the International Federation of Gymnastics (FIG) classifies men's and women's artistic gymnastics as separate disciplines. Clicking on the "Disciplines" tab in the main menu bar brings up a list of FIG disciplines; men's and women's artistic gymnastics are listed separately. Similarly, the IOC considers freestyle wrestling to be a single discipline, but United World Wrestling classifies women's freestyle wrestling as the separate discipline of "female wrestling".
An event, by IOC definition, is a competition that leads to the award of medals. Therefore, the sport of aquatics includes a total of 46 Olympic events, of which 32 are in the discipline of swimming, eight in diving, and two each in artistic swimming, water polo, and open water swimming. The number of events per sport ranges from a minimum of two (until 2008, there were sports with only one event) to a maximum of 48 in athletics, which despite its large number of diverse events is not divided into separate disciplines like aquatics is.
Criteria for inclusion and thresholds Sports eligible for inclusion in the Olympic programme are only those governed by international federations recognized by the IOC, as stated in Bye-laws 1.3.2 and 1.4.2 to Rule 45 of the Olympic Charter (2023). The opportunity to propose additional sports to the programme is at the full discretion of the respective Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games and subject to the final decision of the IOC Session.
In the past, several criteria concerning widely practiced sports, disciplines or events have been abolished. However, the number of sports remains constrained by athlete and event limits. According to Bye-law 3.2 to Rule 45 of the Olympic Charter (2023), Summer Olympics should be approximately limited to 10,500 athletes, 5,000 coaches and support personnel and 310 events, while Winter Olympics should be capped at around 2,900 athletes, 2,000 coaches and support personnel and 100 events, unless agreed to otherwise by the Organizing Committee. These thresholds are likely to be surpassed for the 2028 Summer Olympics; sports director Kit McConnell stated that they would aim to "limit the increase, but limit the impact on the existing sport".
In previous years, sports that depend primarily on mechanical propulsion, such as motor sports, could not be considered for recognition as Olympic sports, though there were power-boating events in 1908 before this rule was enacted by the IOC. The rule excluding motorsports was removed from the Olympic Charter in 2016. The FIA (governing body for automobile sports), FIM (governing body for motorcycle sports), FAI (governing body for air sports) and UIM (governing body for powerboating) are recognized by the International Olympic Committee, and therefore, in theory, could be eligible for inclusion at future Olympic Games.
Changes in Olympic sports
The list of Olympic sports has changed considerably during the course of Olympic history, and has gradually increased over time. The Olympic Charter decrees that Olympic sports for each edition of the Olympic Games should be decided at an IOC Session no later than seven years prior to the Games.
The only summer sports that have never been absent from the Olympic program are athletics, aquatics (swimming), cycling, fencing, and gymnastics (artistic gymnastics). The only winter sports that were included in all Winter Olympic Games are skiing (Nordic skiing), skating (figure skating and speed skating), and ice hockey. Figure skating and ice hockey were also included in the Summer Olympics (in 1908 and 1920) before the Winter Olympics were introduced in 1924.
Early Olympic Games prior to World War II included eight sports that have since been discontinued from the Olympics: basque pelota, croquet, jeu de paume, polo, rackets, roque, tug of war and water motorsports. Organizers were able to decide which sports or disciplines were included on the program from 1896 to 1920, with the IOC taking control of the program in 1924. As a result, a number of sports were on the Olympic program for relatively brief periods: of the eight discontinued early Olympic sports, the only one on the program after 1920 was polo (in 1924 and 1936). These sports were removed because of lack of interest or the absence of an appropriate governing body. Every other Olympic sport has made at least one appearance since 2020. Several sports that were removed by the IOC have managed to return to the Olympic program after long absences, including archery in 1972, tennis in 1988, curling in 1998, golf and rugby in 2016, and cricket and lacrosse in 2028.
For most of the 20th century, the Olympics included one or more demonstration sports, normally to promote a local sport from the host country or to gauge interest in an entirely new sport. Some such sports, like baseball and taekwondo, were later added to the official Olympic program (in 1992 and 2000, respectively). The competitions and ceremonies in these sports were identical to official Olympic sports, except that the medals were not counted in the official record. On some occasions, both official medal events and demonstration events have been contested in the same sport at the same Games, such as men's and women's judo in 1988. Due to logistical issues, the International Olympic Committee decided in 1989 to eliminate demonstration sports from the Olympic Games after 1992. An unofficial exception was made in 2008, when the Beijing Organizing Committee received permission to organize a wushu tournament.
Women first competed in the 1900 Olympic Games, participating in five sports (croquet, sailing, tennis, golf and equestrian). With the addition of women's boxing in 2012 and women's ski jumping in 2014, women can now compete in all Olympic disciplines except for Greco-Roman wrestling. There is also one women-only discipline, rhythmic gymnastics. In 2024, men were allowed to compete in Olympic artistic swimming for the first time, though no men have yet entered an Olympic competition. Nordic combined, an Olympic discipline from 1924 to 2026, never had women compete.
Changes between 2000–2030 The sports of baseball and softball were both voted off the program by the IOC Session in Singapore on 11 July 2005, a decision that was reaffirmed on 9 February 2006. Baseball and softball, before their reinstatement for the 2020 Olympics, were last included in 2008: therefore, the number of sports in the 2012 Summer Olympics was dropped from 28 to 26. This was only the third time after World War II that a sport or discipline had been removed from the Summer Olympic program, following judo after 1964 (returned in 1972) and canoe slalom after 1972 (returned in 1992).
Two previously long-discontinued sports, golf (last competed in 1904) and rugby (last competed in 1924), returned for the 2016 Summer Olympics. On 13 August 2009, the IOC Executive Board proposed that golf and rugby sevens be added to the Olympic program for 2016. On 9 October 2009, during the 121st IOC Session in Copenhagen, the IOC voted to admit both as official Olympic sports and to include them in the 2016 Summer Olympics. The IOC voted 81–8 in favor of rugby sevens and 63–27 in favor of golf, thus bringing the number of sports back to 28.
In February 2013, the IOC considered dropping a sport from the 2020 Summer Olympics to make way for a new sport: modern pentathlon and taekwondo were thought to be vulnerable, but instead the IOC recommended removing wrestling. On 8 September 2013, the decision was reversed and the IOC added wrestling back to the 2020 and 2024 Summer Games.
Starting with the 2020 Games, the IOC altered the way it planned the Olympic sports program: rather than basing it on a maximum number of sports, the total number of events were newly taken into account, opening the schedule up for the inclusion on a per-Games basis of additional sports to the 28 "core" sports. For the 2020 Summer Olympics, the local organizing committee was thus permitted to add five sports to the program in addition to the existing 28, taking the total to 33. Baseball and softball have been treated by the IOC as a single sport since the governing bodies for baseball and softball merged into a single international federation, the World Baseball Softball Confederation, in 2013 (with male athletes competing in baseball and female athletes competing in softball). On 3 August 2016, the IOC voted to add baseball/softball, karate, sport climbing, surfing, and skateboarding as optional sports for the 2020 Summer Olympics.
On 21 February 2019, the Paris 2024 Organizing Committee announced they would propose the inclusion of breakdancing (breaking), as well as skateboarding, sport climbing, and surfing. All four sports were approved during the 134th IOC Session in Lausanne, Switzerland on 24 June 2019.