Swimming To Take Place in So-Fi Stadium At 2028 Olympics, Will Be Pushed To Week Two (2024)

The swimming-football stadium partnership isn’t done yet.

On Friday, LA28, the organizing committee for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, announced some of the official venues for the upcoming games. They confirmed that swimming would take place in So-Fi stadium, home to the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers. The venue will seat 38,000 people, which will make it the largest swimming venue in Olympic history. However, because the opening ceremony will also take place in So-Fi, both the competition and warm-up pool must be covered at the start of the games and won’t be ready for use the next day, the traditional kickoff of the swimming competition. For this reason, swimming will be moved to the second week of the games, while track and field will move to week one. In years prior, swimming has taken place during week one.

“To put one of those big three Olympic sports in a spectacular venue with the capacity we could have to showcase that sport was frankly just too good an opportunity,” LA28 Casey Wasserman told the New York Times. “I have no doubt that it will be the biggest attended swim meet in this country’s history, and maybe the most spectacular swim meet ever.”

Both World Aquatics and World Athletics have approved the schedule changes for swimming and track respectively.

In previous Olympic Games, swimmers have often chosen not to participate at the opening ceremony with competition starting a day later. Swimming coming in week two will give athletes more room to attend the ceremony in LA.

Major venue announcements for other sports were also made, and can be viewed down below:

• Track and field will take place at the LA Memorial Coliseum, which previously hosted the sport at the 1984 and 1932 games.
• Gymnastics will be held at the Crypto.com arena, home to the Los Angeles Lakers (NBA), Sparks (WNBA), and Kings (NHL).
• Basketball be held inside Intuit Dome, home to the Los Angeles Clippers (NBA)
• Softball and Canoe Slalom will take place in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma rather than in Los Angeles. This is because according to LA28, there are no suitable canoe slalom venues on the west coast, while the largest softball venue in Los Angeles seats less than 2,000 people. Notably, Oklahoma City is home to the USA Softball Hall Of Fame stadium, which seats 13,000 and hosts the Women’s College Softball World Series annually.
• The Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area in the San Fernando Valley will host BMX Freestyle, BMX Racing, and skateboarding.
• Diving will take place in Exposition Park, where it was hosted during the 1932 games.
• Equestrian and shooting, previously set to take place at the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area, will both be moved. Equestrian will be at Galway Downs in Temecula, California, while the venue for shooting is to be determined.

Originally, LA28 planned on hosting swimming within a temporary venue on Dedeaux Field, the field for the USC baseball team. However, plans changed following the 2024 U.S. Olympic swimming trials, which took place inside Lucas Oil Stadium — the home of the Indianapolis Colts. Notably on Tuesday night at Olympic trials, the stadium witnessed an attendance of 22,809, which was the largest attendance ever for a session at an indoor swim meet.

2024 U.S. trials has sent a ripple effect even beyond LA28, as rugby/soccer venue Suncorp Stadium was proposed as a potential swimming venue for the 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane, Australia.