The International Olympic Committee (IOC) officially barred transgender women from competing in female category events at the Olympic Games on March 26, 2026, ending years of fragmented gender eligibility rules across international sports federations.
The new policy, which takes effect from the Los Angeles 2028 Summer Olympics, requires all athletes seeking to compete in female category events to pass a one-time SRY gene screening test conducted via saliva, cheek swab, or blood sample.
The Rule in Plain Terms
To compete in any female category event at the Olympics, individual or team, an athlete must pass a one-time SRY gene test. The test checks for the sex-determining region Y gene, a piece of DNA on the Y chromosome that triggers male sex development before birth.
The test is done once. It never needs to be repeated. It is taken through a saliva sample, cheek swab, or blood draw; the IOC describes it as one of the least intrusive testing methods available.
If the SRY gene is detected, the athlete cannot compete in the female category. No exceptions, unless a rare medical condition applies.
Who Is Now Ineligible
Two groups of athletes are directly affected.
The first is transgender women, athletes who were born male and later transitioned. Previously, several federations allowed them to compete in women’s events if they lowered their testosterone levels to a set threshold. That route is now closed at the Olympic level.
The second group is athletes with differences in sex development, or DSD. This includes two-time Olympic 800m champion Caster Semenya, who was assigned female at birth in South Africa but has XY chromosomes and naturally high testosterone. Under earlier rules, Semenya and athletes like her could compete in women’s events if they medically suppressed their testosterone. That is no longer permitted.
As of Paris 2024, no transgender women were known to be competing in female Olympic events. New Zealand’s Laurel Hubbard had been the first openly transgender woman to compete at the Olympics, taking part in women’s weightlifting at Tokyo 2021 without winning a medal.
The One Exception
Athletes diagnosed with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, known as CAIS, are exempt. CAIS means the body does not respond to testosterone at all, even if the SRY gene is present. Because these athletes gain no performance benefit from testosterone, the IOC says excluding them would not serve the purpose of the rule.
All other SRY-positive athletes can still compete at the Olympics, just not in the female category. They remain eligible for male categories, designated male slots in mixed events, and any open category not separated by sex.
Why the IOC Acted Now
For years, the IOC left gender eligibility decisions to individual sports federations. In 2021, it formally told federations to write their own rules. The result was a patchwork; athletics, swimming, cycling, and rugby union had all moved to restrict or ban athletes who went through male puberty, while dozens of smaller federations had done nothing.
Kirsty Coventry changed that. She took over as IOC president in June 2025, becoming the first woman to lead the body in its 132-year history. Within weeks of taking office, she launched a formal review of female category eligibility. After 18 months of consultation with scientists, medical experts, and athletes, the policy was announced.
Coventry put her reasoning in direct terms: “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. In addition, in some sports it would simply not be safe.”
She described the policy as science-led and said athletes would only need to be screened once in their lifetime, with counselling available throughout the process.
What the Science Says
The IOC’s working group reviewed performance data as part of the 18-month process. Their published findings show the scale of the physical gap:
In most running and swimming events, male-born athletes hold roughly a 10 to 12 per cent performance advantage over biological females. In throwing and jumping events, the gap is at least 20 per cent. In explosive power events, including punching sports, the advantage can exceed 100 per cent.
The IOC links this to three periods of testosterone exposure that occur only in male development: before birth, during infant mini-puberty, and through adolescent puberty into adulthood. Each stage, the IOC says, builds physical advantages that remain even after testosterone is later suppressed.
World Athletics had already reached the same conclusion. It introduced the SRY gene cheek swab test for all female athletes ahead of the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo. Skiing and boxing governing bodies had also adopted similar screening.
The Paris 2024 Controversy That Pushed Things Here
The timing of this announcement is not coincidental. The Paris 2024 Olympics triggered a global debate after two boxers, Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan, competed and won gold medals in female weight classes. Both had been disqualified from the previous year’s World Championships by the International Boxing Association over a gender eligibility test. The IBA claimed Khelif had XY chromosomes, though she has always maintained she is a woman.
The IOC cleared both athletes to compete in Paris, pointing to their female passport status. The controversy played out across social media for weeks and became a central issue in the IOC presidential election that followed.
Lin Yu-ting has since passed the new SRY gene test and has been cleared to return to competition. Khelif told CNN Sports in February 2026 that she would take the gene test in order to be eligible for LA 2028.
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Where the US Stands
The IOC’s new rule arrives in alignment with the US government’s position, though the two were developed independently.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in February 2025 titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.” It banned transgender athletes from competing in female categories across school, college, and professional sports in the United States. Trump also pledged to deny visas to transgender athletes attempting to enter the US to compete at the LA 2028 Olympics and threatened to pull federal funding from organisations that allowed transgender participation in women’s sport.
Within months, the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee updated its guidance to national sports bodies, citing a formal obligation to comply with the White House directive.
France Pushes Back
Not everyone welcomed the announcement. The French Olympic Committee issued a statement raising legal and ethical concerns. It said the SRY tests raise major ethical and scientific concerns for all those affected and pointed to a specific problem in France, where conducting such tests conflicts with French bioethics law and the civil code. French laboratories are currently prohibited from carrying them out.
What Supporters Say
World Athletics: “We have led the way in protecting women’s sport over the last decade. Attracting and retaining more girls and women in sport requires a fair and level playing field where there is no biological glass ceiling. This means that gender cannot trump biology. A consistent approach across all sports has to be a good thing.”
Fiona McAnena, director of campaigns at sex-based rights charity Sex Matters, said the IOC had finally done the right thing, and that women had been cheated of medals and fairness in sport for years.
Su Wong of campaign group SEEN in Sport said: “Protecting the female category doesn’t just matter for our Olympic athletes. It impacts ordinary women and girls who just want fair and safe sport.”
What Critics Say
Kimberly Frost, World Co-Secretary-General of ILGA, a global federation of LGBTQ+ rights organisations: “Sports is where excellence, respect and inclusion meet. But instead, the IOC decided to create more scrutiny on the body of any woman who would have just wanted to play the game she loves, from the Olympics, trickling down to every playground.”
LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall warned the decision would stoke further division and said trans people across all levels of sport, young and old, would hear the message that they are unwelcome.
Caster Semenya responded directly: “It does not smell of science. It smells of stigma. It was not born from care for athletes. It was born from political pressure.”
Professor Alun Williams, Sport and Exercise Genomics at Manchester Metropolitan University, said the IOC was using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, adding that transgender women’s participation could be regulated without genetic testing.
A group of academics this month submitted a report to the British Journal of Sports Medicine calling the approach a backwards step and a harmful anachronism. They argued it violates athletes’ human rights, risks false positives, and reduces a complex biological characteristic to a single gene.
This Test Has Been Used Before, and Dropped
The IOC is not introducing something entirely new. It used the SRY gene screening in the 1980s. It was abandoned in the 1990s after several false positive results led to female athletes being incorrectly flagged, causing significant distress and public scrutiny. The IOC says a new scientific review confirms the test has since improved and is now the most accurate and least intrusive method currently available.
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What This Does Not Cover
The rule is not retroactive. Past Olympic results and eligibility decisions stand. The policy also does not apply to amateur or recreational sport at any level.
The IOC expects international sports federations to adopt the same standard ahead of LA 2028. Federations that have not yet drawn up their own gender eligibility rules will now be expected to follow the IOC framework.
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