The Worldwide Olympic Committee (IOC) formally barred transgender ladies from competing in feminine class occasions on the Olympic Video games on March 26, 2026, ending years of fragmented gender eligibility guidelines throughout worldwide sports activities federations.
The brand new coverage, which takes impact from the Los Angeles 2028 Summer season Olympics, requires all athletes in search of to compete in feminine class occasions to go a one-time SRY gene screening take a look at carried out through saliva, cheek swab, or blood pattern.
The Rule in Plain Phrases
To compete in any feminine class occasion on the Olympics, particular person or workforce, an athlete should go a one-time SRY gene take a look at. The take a look at checks for the sex-determining area Y gene, a chunk of DNA on the Y chromosome that triggers male intercourse improvement earlier than beginning.
The take a look at is completed as soon as. It by no means must be repeated. It’s taken by a saliva pattern, cheek swab, or blood draw; the IOC describes it as one of many least intrusive testing strategies out there.
If the SRY gene is detected, the athlete can not compete within the feminine class. No exceptions, until a uncommon medical situation applies.
Who Is Now Ineligible
Two teams of athletes are immediately affected.
The primary is transgender ladies, athletes who have been born male and later transitioned. Beforehand, a number of federations allowed them to compete in ladies’s occasions in the event that they lowered their testosterone ranges to a set threshold. That route is now closed on the Olympic degree.
The second group is athletes with variations in intercourse improvement, or DSD. This contains two-time Olympic 800m champion Caster Semenya, who was assigned feminine at beginning in South Africa however has XY chromosomes and naturally excessive testosterone. Beneath earlier guidelines, Semenya and athletes like her may compete in ladies’s occasions in the event that they medically suppressed their testosterone. That’s now not permitted.
As of Paris 2024, no transgender ladies have been identified to be competing in feminine Olympic occasions. New Zealand’s Laurel Hubbard had been the primary overtly transgender lady to compete on the Olympics, collaborating in ladies’s weightlifting at Tokyo 2021 with out profitable a medal.
The One Exception
Athletes recognized with Full Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, referred to as CAIS, are exempt. CAIS means the physique doesn’t reply to testosterone in any respect, even when the SRY gene is current. As a result of these athletes achieve no efficiency profit from testosterone, the IOC says excluding them wouldn’t serve the aim of the rule.
All different SRY-positive athletes can nonetheless compete on the Olympics, simply not within the feminine class. They continue to be eligible for male classes, designated male slots in blended occasions, and any open class not separated by intercourse.
Why the IOC Acted Now
For years, the IOC left gender eligibility choices to particular person sports activities federations. In 2021, it formally instructed federations to write down their very own guidelines. The end result was a patchwork; athletics, swimming, biking, and rugby union had all moved to limit or ban athletes who went by male puberty, whereas dozens of smaller federations had carried out nothing.
Kirsty Coventry modified that. She took over as IOC president in June 2025, changing into the primary lady to steer the physique in its 132-year historical past. Inside weeks of taking workplace, she launched a proper overview of feminine class eligibility. After 18 months of session with scientists, medical specialists, and athletes, the coverage was introduced.
Coventry put her reasoning in direct phrases: “On the Olympic Video games, even the smallest margins will be the distinction between victory and defeat. So it’s completely clear that it might not be truthful for organic males to compete within the feminine class. As well as, in some sports activities it might merely not be protected.”
She described the coverage as science-led and mentioned athletes would solely should be screened as soon as of their lifetime, with counselling out there all through the method.
What the Science Says
The IOC’s working group reviewed efficiency information as a part of the 18-month course of. Their revealed findings present the dimensions of the bodily hole:
In most working and swimming occasions, male-born athletes maintain roughly a ten to 12 per cent efficiency benefit over organic females. In throwing and leaping occasions, the hole is at the least 20 per cent. In explosive energy occasions, together with punching sports activities, the benefit can exceed 100 per cent.
The IOC hyperlinks this to a few intervals of testosterone publicity that happen solely in male improvement: earlier than beginning, throughout toddler mini-puberty, and thru adolescent puberty into maturity. Every stage, the IOC says, builds bodily benefits that stay even after testosterone is later suppressed.
World Athletics had already reached the identical conclusion. It launched the SRY gene cheek swab take a look at for all feminine athletes forward of the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo. Snowboarding and boxing governing our bodies had additionally adopted comparable screening.
The Paris 2024 Controversy That Pushed Issues Right here
The timing of this announcement shouldn’t be coincidental. The Paris 2024 Olympics triggered a world debate after two boxers, Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan, competed and received gold medals in feminine weight courses. Each had been disqualified from the earlier yr’s World Championships by the Worldwide Boxing Affiliation over a gender eligibility take a look at. The IBA claimed Khelif had XY chromosomes, although she has at all times maintained she is a girl.
The IOC cleared each athletes to compete in Paris, pointing to their feminine passport standing. The controversy performed out throughout social media for weeks and have become a central challenge within the IOC presidential election that adopted.
Lin Yu-ting has since handed the brand new SRY gene take a look at and has been cleared to return to competitors. Khelif instructed CNN Sports activities in February 2026 that she would take the gene take a look at in an effort to be eligible for LA 2028.
ALSO READ: LA 2028 Olympics | IWF Proclaims New Body weight Classes Excludes Mirabai Chanu
The place the US Stands
The IOC’s new rule arrives in alignment with the US authorities’s place, although the 2 have been developed independently.
President Donald Trump signed an government order in February 2025 titled “Protecting Males Out of Ladies’s Sports activities.” It banned transgender athletes from competing in feminine classes throughout faculty, faculty, {and professional} sports activities in the USA. Trump additionally pledged to disclaim visas to transgender athletes making an attempt to enter the US to compete on the LA 2028 Olympics and threatened to drag federal funding from organisations that allowed transgender participation in ladies’s sport.
Inside months, the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee up to date its steering to nationwide sports activities our bodies, citing a proper obligation to adjust to the White Home directive.
France Pushes Again
Not everybody welcomed the announcement. The French Olympic Committee issued an announcement elevating authorized and moral issues. It mentioned the SRY assessments increase main moral and scientific issues for all these affected and pointed to a selected drawback in France, the place conducting such assessments conflicts with French bioethics legislation and the civil code. French laboratories are presently prohibited from carrying them out.
What Supporters Say
World Athletics: “We’ve led the way in which in defending ladies’s sport over the past decade. Attracting and retaining extra women and girls in sport requires a good and degree taking part in area the place there isn’t a organic glass ceiling. Which means that gender can not trump biology. A constant method throughout all sports activities needs to be a great factor.”
Fiona McAnena, director of campaigns at sex-based rights charity Intercourse Issues, mentioned the IOC had lastly carried out the suitable factor, and that girls had been cheated of medals and equity in sport for years.
Su Wong of marketing campaign group SEEN in Sport mentioned: “Defending the feminine class doesn’t simply matter for our Olympic athletes. It impacts strange ladies and women who simply need truthful and protected sport.”
What Critics Say
Kimberly Frost, World Co-Secretary-Basic of ILGA, a world federation of LGBTQ+ rights organisations: “Sports activities is the place excellence, respect and inclusion meet. However as an alternative, the IOC determined to create extra scrutiny on the physique of any lady who would have simply wished to play the sport she loves, from the Olympics, trickling down to each playground.”
LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall warned the choice would stoke additional division and mentioned trans individuals throughout all ranges of sport, younger and outdated, would hear the message that they’re unwelcome.
Caster Semenya responded immediately: “It doesn’t scent of science. It smells of stigma. It was not born from look after athletes. It was born from political stress.”
Professor Alun Williams, Sport and Train Genomics at Manchester Metropolitan College, mentioned the IOC was utilizing a sledgehammer to crack a nut, including that transgender ladies’s participation may very well be regulated with out genetic testing.
A bunch of teachers this month submitted a report back to the British Journal of Sports activities Medication calling the method a backwards step and a dangerous anachronism. They argued it violates athletes’ human rights, dangers false positives, and reduces a posh organic attribute to a single gene.
This Check Has Been Used Earlier than, and Dropped
The IOC shouldn’t be introducing one thing totally new. It used the SRY gene screening within the Eighties. It was deserted within the Nineteen Nineties after a number of false constructive outcomes led to feminine athletes being incorrectly flagged, inflicting important misery and public scrutiny. The IOC says a brand new scientific overview confirms the take a look at has since improved and is now essentially the most correct and least intrusive methodology presently out there.
SUGGESTED READ: LA 2028 Olympic Video games Full Schedule
What This Does Not Cowl
The rule shouldn’t be retroactive. Previous Olympic outcomes and eligibility choices stand. The coverage additionally doesn’t apply to newbie or leisure sport at any degree.
The IOC expects worldwide sports activities federations to undertake the identical commonplace forward of LA 2028. Federations that haven’t but drawn up their very own gender eligibility guidelines will now be anticipated to observe the IOC framework.
For extra Olympics updates, observe Jeetwin Weblog
