Published On 26 Mar 2026
Transgender women athletes are now excluded from women’s events at the Olympics after the IOC agreed to a new eligibility policy that aligns with US President Donald Trump’s executive order on sports ahead of the Los Angeles 2028 Summer Olympics.
“Eligibility for any female category event at the Olympic Games or any other IOC event, including individual and team sports, is now limited to biological females,” the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said, noting this is to be determined by a mandatory gene test once in an athlete’s career.
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It is unclear how many, if any, transgender women are competing at an Olympic level. No woman who transitioned from being born male competed at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, though New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard did at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 without winning a medal.
The new eligibility policy, which will apply at the July 2028 LA Olympics and at other Games going forward, aims to protect “fairness, safety and integrity in the female category”, the IOC said.
“It is not retroactive and does not apply to any grassroots or recreational sports programmes,” said the IOC, whose Olympic Charter states that access to play sport is a human right.
After an executive board meeting, the IOC published a 10-page policy document that also restricts female athletes, such as South Africa’s two-time Olympic champion runner Caster Semenya, who have medical conditions known as differences in sex development, or DSD.
The IOC and its president, Kirsty Coventry, have wanted a clear policy instead of continuing to advise sports’ governing bodies, which previously have drafted their own rules.
“At the Olympic Games, even the smallest margins can be the difference between victory and defeat,” Coventry, a two-time Olympic gold medallist in swimming, said in a statement. “So, it is absolutely clear that it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category.”
She set up a review of “protecting the female category” as one of her first big decisions last June as the first woman to lead the Olympic body in its 132-year history.
Female eligibility was a strong theme in a seven-candidate IOC election last year — held after a furore around women’s boxing in Paris — when Coventry’s main rivals pledged stronger policies on the issue.
Before the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, three top-tier sports — track and field, swimming and cycling — excluded transgender women who had been through male puberty. Semenya, who was assigned female at birth and has testosterone levels higher than the typical female range, won a European Court of Human Rights judgement in her years-long legal challenge to track and field’s rules that did not overturn them.
Performance advantage from testosterone
The IOC document details its research that being born male gives physical advantages that a working group of experts believes are retained.
“Males experience three significant testosterone peaks: In utero, in mini-puberty of infancy and beginning in adolescent puberty through adulthood,” the document said.
It added that this gives males “individual sex-based performance advantages in sports and events that rely on strength, power and/or endurance.”
The IOC said its research included “in-depth individual interviews with impacted athletes from around the world”.
The expert group agreed that the current gene test is “the most accurate and least intrusive method currently available”. The saliva, cheek swab or blood sample screens for “the SRY gene, a segment of DNA typically found on the Y chromosome that initiates male sex development in utero and indicates the presence of testes/testicles”.
Still, the mandatory gender screening — already conducted by the governing bodies of track and field, skiing and boxing — is likely to be criticised by human rights experts and activist groups.
Women’s boxing champions
One of the two women’s boxing gold medallists at the centre of the gender controversy in Paris, Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan, has passed her gene test and can return to competition, the World Boxing governing body said last week.
The other Olympic boxing champion, Imane Khelif of Algeria, told CNN last month that she would take a gene test to be eligible for the LA Olympics. She is reportedly preparing for a professional bout next month in Paris.
The IOC document published on Thursday said the male performance advantage over biological women was 10-12 percent in “most running and swimming events” and at least 20 percent in “most throwing and jumping events”, and “can be greater than” 100 percent for explosive power events, including “punching sports”.
Trump’s executive order
In the US, President Trump signed the executive order “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” in February last year, and pledged to deny visas to some athletes attempting to compete at the LA Olympics. The order also threatened to “rescind all funds” from organisations that allowed transgender athletes to take part in women’s sports.
Within months, the US Olympic body updated its guidance to national sports bodies, citing an obligation to comply with the White House.