Is LA 2028 building new Olympic stadiums?

No permanent ones. It will be the first Summer Games since London 1948 to build no new permanent structures, relying instead on more than 40 existing sites across Southern California and beyond.

Where is the LA 2028 opening ceremony?

Shared between two venues on 14 July 2028 — the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in Exposition Park and SoFi Stadium in Inglewood. It is an unprecedented dual-venue arrangement, with the Coliseum also hosting the Olympic and Paralympic closing ceremonies.

Why is the LA Memorial Coliseum significant?

Because LA 2028 will make it the first venue in history to host events at three Olympic Games, having previously served the 1932 and 1984 Games. It seats 77,500.

Does using existing venues make the Olympics cheaper?

It removes one large category of cost, but it has not held the total down. LA 2028's organising committee budget has risen from $5.3 billion to $7.145 billion before the Games have started — an increase of about 35% with no permanent venue construction in it.

Where is Olympic swimming at LA 2028?

SoFi Stadium, in a temporary pool installed inside the NFL venue, which will also host the Opening Ceremony. Using a temporary pool in an existing stadium avoids building an aquatics centre the city would have to maintain afterwards.

What does the LA 2028 budget cover?

The organising committee's own budget of $7.145 billion covers staging the Games. Costs falling to host governments — security, transport and infrastructure — are usually separate from and additional to that figure.

When was the last Olympics with no new permanent venues?

London 1948. Every Summer Games between then and now has built at least one permanent venue, which is what makes the LA 2028 approach a first in eight decades.

LA 2028 Venues: No New Stadiums, 35% Over Budget

Q: How many venues will LA 2028 use?

More than 40, staging 51 sports disciplines. They spread across Southern California and beyond — SoFi Stadium for swimming, the Intuit Dome for basketball, the Rose Bowl for the football finals, and canoe slalom and softball as far away as Oklahoma City.

LA 2028 will build no new permanent venues — the first Summer Games to do so since London 1948.

Its budget has still risen from $5.3 billion to $7.145 billion before the Games begin — an increase of about 35%.

Those two facts together are the most useful thing anyone can know about Olympic costs.


Games dates	14–30 July 2028
New permanent venues	None — first since London 1948
Existing venues used	40+
Sports disciplines	51
Opening Ceremony	14 July 2028, dual venue
Budget, original → current	$5.3bn → $7.145bn

The venue plan

More than 40 existing sites stage 51 sports disciplines, spreading well beyond Los Angeles — to San Diego, to Oklahoma City, and as far as New York.

The centrepieces are both historic. The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, seating 77,500, and the Rose Bowl have each staged Olympic competition before.

The Coliseum will become the first venue in history to host events at three Olympic Games — 1932, 1984 and now 2028. No other stadium has been used across three Olympiads.

Which venue hosts what

Venue	What it hosts
SoFi Stadium (as 2028 Stadium)	Opening Ceremony · swimming
LA Memorial Coliseum	Opening Ceremony · Olympic and Paralympic closing ceremonies
Rose Bowl	Men’s and women’s football finals
Intuit Dome	Basketball
Crypto.com Arena, downtown LA	Indoor competition
Los Angeles Convention Center	Indoor competition
BMO Stadium, Exposition Park	Competition venue
Dignity Health Sports Park, Carson	Sports complex venues
Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area	Competition venue
Long Beach	Multiple competition venues
Dodger Stadium	Competition venue
Universal Studios	Competition venue
San Clemente	Surfing
Oklahoma City	Canoe slalom · softball

SoFi Stadium hosting swimming is the whole policy in one image. Rather than build an aquatics centre that a city does not need afterwards, LA28 will put a temporary pool inside an NFL stadium. It is also the Games’ busiest building — Opening Ceremony and the swimming programme, in the venue that took nearly four years to build and opened in 2020.

The geography is the other consequence. Canoe slalom and softball go to Oklahoma City, roughly 1,300 miles from Los Angeles, because a suitable venue already exists there and building one in California would breach the policy. A no-new-build Games is necessarily a dispersed one.

A ceremony in two stadiums at once

The Opening Ceremony on 14 July 2028 will be shared between the Coliseum and SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, an arrangement without precedent at a Games.

The Coliseum will also host the Olympic and Paralympic closing ceremonies, and SoFi will follow its ceremony duties by staging the swimming programme.

Splitting a ceremony across two venues is a direct consequence of the no-new-build policy: rather than construct a single stadium sized for the occasion, LA28 is using two it already has. SoFi took nearly four years to build and opened in 2020, as our guide to how long it takes to build a stadium sets out — for the Olympics, it was simply already there.

What the budget tells you

Here is the part that matters beyond Los Angeles.

The standard explanation for Olympic cost overruns is stadium construction. Cities build venues they do not need, at prices that escalate, and the bill lands on the public.

LA is building none of them, and is already about 35% over its original budget.


Original organising committee budget	$5.3bn
Current	$7.145bn
Increase	~$1.85bn, about 35%

That is before the Games have started, and every previous Summer Games has risen further between this point and the closing ceremony.

So venue construction cannot be the whole story. The remaining cost sits in operations, security, transport, technology, workforce and inflation — categories that scale with the size of the event rather than with how much concrete is poured.

An Oxford study found every host city since the 1960s exceeded its initial budget, Rio 2016 by around 352% and Tokyo 2020 by 280%, while Paris promised a €1 billion maximum public contribution and the French Court of Auditors put the eventual cost to taxpayers at nearly €6 billion. Our guide to the cost to host the Olympics sets out the full record.

LA 2028 is the cleanest test yet of whether the venue thesis was ever right, and the early answer is no.

Why this is still the right approach

None of that makes the no-new-build policy a failure. It makes it a partial solution to a larger problem.

Existing venues avoid the outcome that has damaged host cities most: permanent stadiums with no viable use afterwards. Athens, Rio and Beijing all carry venues that cost more to maintain than they generate. LA will finish the Games owning nothing it did not already own.

It also removes construction risk — the delays and overruns that dominate the timelines in our guide to how long it takes to build a stadium, and the budgets in our ranking of the most expensive stadiums.

What it does not do is make the Olympics cheap.

What this means for tickets

Using existing venues fixes capacity at whatever those buildings already hold, which shapes how tickets are sold. LA 2028 uses a timed-slot model rather than the random ballots most major events run — the contrast is set out in our guide to sports ticket ballots.

How we checked these numbers

The 14-30 July 2028 dates, the status of LA 2028 as the first Summer Games since London 1948 to build no new permanent structures, the use of more than 40 venues and the 51-discipline programme are from Olympics.com’s venue overview, with Dezeen’s venue analysis and NBC Los Angeles’ venue guide. The venue-by-sport assignments — SoFi Stadium for swimming, the Intuit Dome for basketball, the Rose Bowl for the men’s and women’s football finals, and canoe slalom and softball in Oklahoma City — are from Olympics.com and NBC Olympics, with the downtown, Carson, Long Beach, Dodger Stadium, Universal Studios and San Clemente sites from CBS News and NBC Los Angeles. The dual-venue Opening Ceremony on 14 July 2028 shared between the LA Memorial Coliseum and SoFi Stadium, the Coliseum’s 77,500 capacity, its distinction as the first venue to host events at three Olympic Games, and its hosting of both closing ceremonies are from SoFi Stadium’s announcement and CBS News, with additional venue detail from Los Angeles Magazine.

The budget figures come from our own Olympic cost coverage — an organising committee budget rising from $5.3 billion to $7.145 billion — and the ~35% increase is our own arithmetic. That is the organising committee’s budget only; costs falling to host governments are separate and additional, which is why total Games spending is always larger than the number quoted here.

Sports and disciplines are different units. Olympics.com describes 51 sports disciplines across the programme; other coverage counts 36 sports. Both can be correct — a sport such as cycling contains several disciplines — so we have used the disciplines figure and flagged the distinction rather than blending them.

Venue lists change. Sites are added, dropped and reassigned in the years before a Games, and the “more than 40” figure should be read as the current plan rather than a final schedule. Individual venue assignments in the table above are as reported and some carry only a general competition designation rather than a confirmed sport.

Review class: event-driven. Recheck on any venue change, budget revision, or as the Games approach.