The International Olympic Committee has announced a new Policy on the Protection of the Female (Women's) Category in Olympic Sport, which will apply from the LA28 Olympic Games onwards and is not retroactive.
Eligibility for any female category event at the Olympic Games or any other IOC event, including individual and team sports, is now limited to biological females, determined on the basis of a one-time SRY gene screening. The test can be conducted via saliva, cheek swab or blood sample. Athletes who screen negative will have permanent eligibility to compete in the female category.
The issue of transgender participation in sports has been a cultural flashpoint in recent years, though it is unclear how many transgender women currently compete at the Olympic level; weightlifter Laurel Hubbard made history as the first openly transgender woman to do so at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, though no woman who transitioned after being assigned male at birth is known to have participated in an Olympics since.
Controversy intensified at the Paris 2024 Olympics when right-wing politicians and commentators questioned the sexes of two female boxers who had been previously disqualified from boxing world championships after failing eligibility tests, which sparked a global debate over gender eligibility and prompted the IOC to begin the review that led to this policy.
The IOC and its president, Kirsty Coventry, have wanted a clear policy instead of continuing to advise sports governing bodies who previously drafted their own rules; Coventry set up a review of protecting the female category as one of her first big decisions last June as the first woman to lead the Olympic body in its 132-year history. The review ran between September 2024 and March 2026 and included consultation with a range of experts and feedback from International Federations and athletes from around the world, including athletes potentially impacted by the new policy.
IOC President Kirsty Coverty stated in a video: "At the Olympic Games, even the smallest margins can be the difference between victory and defeat. So, it is absolutely clear that it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category."
The policy's scientific foundation rests on assumptions about male physical advantages. According to IOC research, the male performance advantage over biological women is 10-12 per cent in most running and swimming events, at least 20 per cent in most throwing and jumping events, and can exceed 100 per cent for explosive power events including punching sports. However, experts say the testing raises multiple concerns about the reliability and cost of the testing, as well as interpretation and finality of results; critics say it invades the privacy of all women and discriminates against intersex people whose reproductive or sexual anatomy does not fit binary definitions of male or female.
The IOC says the SRY gene represents highly accurate evidence that an athlete has experienced male sex development, but there is a lack of consensus about this in the scientific community; in fact, the scientist who discovered the SRY gene in 1990, Andrew Sinclair, has publicly opposed using the test to determine biological sex, stating in an opinion piece in 2025 that it "isn't cut-and-dried" because "it does not tell you how SRY is functioning, whether a testis has formed, whether testosterone is produced and, if so, whether it can be used by the body."
The IOC's announcement aligns with international political pressure. In February 2025, President Trump issued an executive order aimed at banning transgender women of all ages from competing on women's teams, in part by threatening to pull federal funding from institutions that allow it; the NCAA quickly complied. The Trump administration cheered the IOC's decision, with White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt tweeting that the executive order "made this happen."
Yet IOC President Coverty pushed back on the suggestion that external pressure influenced the decision, stating: "This was a priority for me way before President Trump came into his second term. There's not been any pressure on us to deliver anything from anybody outside of the Olympic Movement."
With rare exceptions for athletes with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome or other rare differences in sex development who do not benefit from testosterone's performance-enhancing effects, no athlete with an SRY-positive screen is eligible for competition in the female category; however, these athletes continue to be eligible for all other classifications for which they qualify, including any male category or mixed category.
Human rights groups have previously opposed using sex testing for athlete eligibility, and 90 organisations issued a joint statement urging the IOC not to require genetic testing or bar transgender athletes from women's events, with the Sport and Rights Alliance arguing that such a policy would be "a catastrophic erosion of women's rights and safety."
The policy is not retroactive and does not apply to any grassroots or recreational sports programmes. The policy can and likely will be challenged at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, with any potential appeal examining the science underpinning IOC research that was not published; a case could occupy much of the near-28 months until the LA Olympics open.