Lacrosse at the Olympics: the early results and the road to Los Angeles 2028.

Status on 23 October 2026

• LA28 qualification: in progress. The IOC Executive Board approved the lacrosse qualification system on 1 February 2026 (World Lacrosse, 2 February 2026). Two of the four continental sixes championships of 2026 are finished and two are still to be played. No team has qualified except the United States, whose host place depends on its teams taking part in the qualifying events.
• The 2027 World Lacrosse Sixes Championships, the main qualifier: upcoming, 4 to 10 October 2027 in Colorado Springs.
• The final Olympic qualifying tournament: upcoming, expected in March or April 2028.
• The Olympic lacrosse tournament: upcoming, 24 to 29 July 2028 in Los Angeles. No medallist can be named until then.

1904 and 1908: the medal tournaments

Olympedia, the Olympic historians' database, records lacrosse as a full medal sport for men only at St. Louis 1904 and London 1908. The Canadian Olympic Committee gives the same list.

• St. Louis, 1904. Played from 2 to 7 July 1904 at Francis Field, Washington University, as a knockout event with 36 players from two countries. The Winnipeg Shamrocks (Canada) won gold, beating the St. Louis Amateur Athletic Association (United States) 8-2 in the final on 7 July 1904; the Mohawk Indians (Canada) took bronze (Olympedia). The Canadian Olympic Committee says the bronze medal team, from near Brantford, Ontario, is now recognised as Haudenosaunee.
• London, 1908. A single match on 24 October 1908 at White City Stadium, after South Africa withdrew: Canada 14, Great Britain 10 (Olympedia). Olympedia says it was played under compromise rules between the Canadian and English games.

The Canadian Olympic Committee says Canada holds three Olympic lacrosse medals, two gold and one bronze, the most of any country. Lacrosse was then a demonstration sport in 1928, 1932 and 1948, events that awarded no official Olympic medals; USA Lacrosse says the United States won a three-game series against Canada 2-1 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 1932, and that the United States and Great Britain drew 5-5 at Wembley in 1948. The story of those Games is on the Olympic years, and the recognition steps from 2018 onward are on the Olympic path.

LA28: what has been decided

The IOC Session in Mumbai included lacrosse (sixes) as an additional sport for Los Angeles 2028 on 16 October 2023, for that edition only (IOC). On 10 April 2025 the IOC Executive Board approved the LA28 event programme of 351 medal events, with 698 extra athlete places (322 for women, 376 for men) across the five sports LA28 proposed, lacrosse among them (Olympic Council of Asia report of the decision).

• Dates and format. As World Lacrosse announced on 15 July 2025, reported by USA Lacrosse: 24 to 29 July 2028, in the second week of the Games, with six teams per gender, five days of round-robin play, then a gold medal game between the top two and a bronze medal game between third and fourth.
• Daily schedule. World Lacrosse's schedule of 12 November 2025 puts men's round-robin sessions from 12:00 to 15:00 and men's medal games from 13:30 to 16:00, Pacific time, and women's round-robin sessions from 19:00 to 22:00 and women's medal games from 20:30 to 23:00. Both finals fall on Day 15 of the Games. World Lacrosse says the schedule may change.
• The Games around it. NBC Sports reports that the LA28 Games open on 14 July 2028, and that this will be lacrosse's first Olympic appearance as a full medal sport since 1908 and its first in the six-a-side format.
• Women. USA Lacrosse says women's lacrosse will make its Olympic debut at LA28; Olympedia records the 1904 and 1908 tournaments as men only.

The venue's name. World Lacrosse calls it Exposition Park Stadium, home of Los Angeles Football Club and beside the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. USA Lacrosse coverage was summarised as "The Stadium in Exposition Park", and an NLL article as BMO Stadium. These look like names for the same stadium, but we did not reach an LA28 page to confirm the official one.

Team size, two versions. World Lacrosse said in November 2023 that sixes was chosen with a 12-player roster in mind, a size that suits the Olympic cap on athletes. A USA Lacrosse athlete-selection notice of 13 December 2025 was summarised in a search result as giving 11 athletes per team, but the document itself returned an error when opened. The roster size is therefore unconfirmed; it needs the IOC's qualification document, which our research could not read. In the same 2023 answers World Lacrosse said at least six teams per gender had been approved and it hoped for eight; six is what was scheduled.

How teams qualify

World Lacrosse's account of the system the IOC Executive Board approved on 1 February 2026 says six men's and six women's teams will play, from a pathway about 100 teams were expected to enter.

1. Host place. The United States qualifies as host, provided its men's and women's teams take part in the continental championships and the World Sixes Championships.
2. Step 1, continental sixes championships in 2026. Pan-American (Oshawa, Canada), Asia-Pacific (Sunshine Coast, Australia) and European (Salou, Spain), each sending five teams per gender to the 2027 worlds, and African, sending one. Their results so far are on sixes and the World Games.
3. Step 2, the 2027 World Lacrosse Sixes Championships. To be eligible for an Olympic place a team must finish in the top 12, and between one and three teams per continental federation can qualify. Four men's and four women's teams qualify, plus the United States if it took part. The next six eligible teams go on to a final qualifier.
4. Step 3, a final qualifying tournament, expected in March or April 2028: six teams per gender play a round robin, and the top two meet for the last place in each gender.

World Lacrosse's August 2026 release puts it another way: five of the six places per gender are decided at Colorado Springs and one at the final qualifier. That count includes the host place, so it matches the February system.

The Haudenosaunee and LA28: unresolved

The Haudenosaunee Nationals are a full member of World Lacrosse. Whether they can play at LA28 as their own team was undecided on the latest dates our research found. The dated facts are these:

• 1 November 2023: World Lacrosse said no Haudenosaunee Olympic eligibility had been confirmed, noted that the Nationals had competed at The World Games 2022, and said it was working on a possible pathway that respects the Olympic framework.
• 22 August 2024: a Canadian Heritage Question Period note said every Olympic team must be entered by a National Olympic Committee recognised by the IOC, which the Haudenosaunee do not have; that the IOC Refugee Team is the only precedent for a team that is not a country; and that Canada supports finding a pathway.
• 17 January 2025: the governments of the United States and Canada jointly asked the IOC for a narrowly scoped exception so the Haudenosaunee Confederacy could compete in lacrosse at LA28 as its own team under its own flag.
• 5 June 2025: a Syracuse.com article republished by the Onondaga Nation reported that the IOC had so far said it would not allow the Haudenosaunee to compete under their own flag, and regarded Haudenosaunee players as a matter for the US and Canadian Olympic committees according to passport. The Haudenosaunee were waiting for replies from IOC President Kirsty Coventry and LA28 chair Casey Wasserman. This is a press report of the IOC's position, not an IOC document.

We found no IOC decision on Haudenosaunee eligibility dated 2026, up to 23 October 2026. The Nationals' own results are on Haudenosaunee Nationals results.

Watching LA28

We found no lacrosse-specific statement of who will broadcast the LA28 tournament. Broadcasters that the leagues and bodies have named for other events are on watching lacrosse.