India’s Abhishek Sharma in motion throughout their Asia Cup 2025 recreation in opposition to Pakistan on the Dubai Worldwide Cricket Stadium, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, September 14, 2025. — Reuters
The Worldwide Cricket Council (ICC) on Monday confirmed the qualification pathway for the game’s historic return to the Olympics on the Los Angeles Video games 2028 after a 128-year hiatus.
The boys’s and girls’s cricket competitions on the LA 2028 will characteristic six groups every, with Africa, Asia, Europe and Oceania all assured illustration.
Out of the six spots, 5 can be determined by a mix of current ICC occasions and ICC T20I rankings, based on the present Future Tour Programme (FTP) construction, shared the apex physique on Monday.
In the meantime, the sixth and last locations in each the lads’s and girls’s competitions can be decided by the inaugural ICC Olympics Qualifier, which is ready to be held in 2027 and can characteristic eight groups.
“Five qualification places in each event will be decided through a combination of existing ICC events and ICC T20I rankings, according to the existing approved and published FTP structure,” mentioned the ICC in an announcement.
“The sixth and final places in both the Men’s and Women’s competitions will be determined through the new ICC Olympics Qualifier, which will take place in 2027.”
The ICC additional shared that the continued Ladies’s T20 World Cup 2026 has confirmed Australia, England, India and South Africa have certified for the respective cricket competitors on the Video games on the advantage of being the highest-placed eligible finishers from Africa, Asia, Europe and Oceania.
As per the recently-unveiled qualification pathway, the USA of America (USA) stay eligible to qualify because the host nation for each the lads’s and girls’s occasions however topic to showing within the high 15 of the related ICC T20I rankings at any time throughout the qualification interval from June 30, 2026, to December 31, 2026.
Nevertheless, if the USA males’s and girls’s groups fail to satisfy the standards, the fifth spots in each occasions can be granted to the highest-placed non-qualified nation within the respective rankings, with the closing dates set at March 1, 2027, and December 31, 2026, respectively.
The apex cricketing physique additionally shared that the West Indies aren’t eligible to take part within the Olympic Video games or to acquire a quota place, as they’re a composite ICC member representing a number of Caribbean nations and never recognised as an IOC Nationwide Olympic Committee (NOC).
Nevertheless, if their males’s and girls’s groups are among the many eight highest-ranked groups not but certified by December 31, 2026, a devoted Caribbean Qualifier occasion can be held to find out which NOC will characterize the area on the ICC Qualifier.
