The International Olympic Committee has announced that all female category events at the Olympic Games and other IOC competitions will be restricted to biological females, determined through a one-time gene test, in a significant policy shift that brings the organisation into line with a US executive order on women’s sports.
The new eligibility rules apply across both individual and team sports and cover any IOC-sanctioned event, not solely the Games themselves. The policy change means transgender women will no longer be eligible to compete in the female category at Olympic level.
The decision aligns with an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games, which established that female sporting categories should be limited to those born biologically female.
It remains unclear how many transgender women, if any, are currently competing at Olympic level. No athlete who had transitioned from male to female competed at the 2024 Paris Summer Games.
The IOC’s announcement marks a definitive shift in approach for an organisation that had previously left eligibility decisions largely to individual sports federations, resulting in varying rules across different disciplines. The move to a uniform gene-based test across all female categories represents one of the most sweeping and standardised eligibility policies the IOC has adopted on this issue.
The decision is expected to prompt debate among athlete groups, sporting bodies and campaigners on both sides of the issue, with further discussion anticipated in the lead-up to the Los Angeles Games.
