Cricket Venues for LA Olympics 2028 Confirmed

After more than a century on the sidelines, cricket will officially return to the Olympic stage at the 2028 Los Angeles (LA) Olympics—and fittingly, the comeback will happen at a venue designed to symbolize new beginnings.

The LA28 organizing committee has confirmed that a purpose-built temporary venue will be constructed at the historic Fairgrounds in Pomona, Southern California, a city roughly 50 kilometers east of downtown Los Angeles. The Fairplex—a sprawling 500-acre complex that has hosted the iconic Los Angeles County Fair since 1922—will transform into cricket’s home for what is being billed as the sport’s global reintroduction to the Olympic movement.

The last time cricket featured at the Olympics, the Eiffel Tower was barely a decade old, and the event was more of an exhibition than a spectacle. It was the year 1900, and a two-day game between Great Britain and France in Paris remains cricket’s only brush with the Olympic flame.

Fast forward 128 years, and cricket returns not as a curiosity, but as a calculated, modern sporting product ready to embrace a new audience. And it arrives in T20 format—cricket’s most television-friendly, audience-accessible version.

Both the men’s and women’s eventswill feature six teams, each with 15-player squads, for a total of 90 athlete spots per gender. While the qualification pathways and timelines are yet to be formally announced, the format is expected to follow a compressed tournament model that fits seamlessly into the 16-day Olympic schedule from July 14 to 30, 2028.

The LA-based venue in Pomona will be entirely temporary, drawing inspiration from similar pop-up venues used during the 2024 Men’s T20 World Cup in the USA, such as the modular stadium built in New York for the marquee India vs. Pakistan clash. That match—broadcast globally to millions—offered a glimpse of the game’s potential in non-traditional markets.

The LA Olympics are not a one-off experiment for cricket, but a stepping stone toward sustained Olympic presence. Plans are already underway to include the sport at the 2032 Brisbane Olympics, where it is expected to have even deeper resonance. In fact, early reports suggest that the cricket finals in Brisbane may serve as the farewell event at the Gabba, just before its planned demolition.

From an overlooked two-day match in Paris in 1900 to a state-of-the-art venue in Southern California in 2028, cricket’s Olympic arc has been slow, improbable, and ultimately triumphant. The game that once seemed too complex, too long, and too niche for the Olympic stage has redefined itself—and now stands ready to captivate the world once more.

This time, cricket isn’t arriving at the Games as a novelty. It’s coming as a global force, powered by passion, precision, and a promise to stay.