Team USA's road to LA28: who is already in, and who is racing for a spot
Two years out from a home Games, American qualification has quietly begun — flag football's teams are locked in, the basketball calendar is live, and the pool and the track are showing world-record form.
The Los Angeles Games are still two summers away, but the first LA28 berths are already decided — and some of them belong to Team USA. Here is where the marquee American stories stand as of early September 2026.
Flag football: both US teams are in — and tested
As host, the United States holds automatic spots in the Olympic debut of flag football. At the IFAF World Championships in Düsseldorf in mid-August, the US men won gold, beating Italy 46-26 in the final, while the US women took silver after a 27-20 loss to Canada, per NFL.com. The tournament also produced the first qualified challengers: Italy and Canada on the men's side, Canada and Mexico on the women's, with remaining berths to come at later qualifying events, according to Just Women's Sports. That women's final is the loss to watch: Canada has beaten the US on the sport's biggest stage before LA.
Basketball: two live campaigns
The men's national team closed Window 4 of 2027 FIBA World Cup qualifying — the pathway event before LA28 — with a 104-80 win over Colombia in Washington, DC, per USA Basketball. The women are up next and sooner: the FIBA Women's World Cup starts September 4 in Berlin, where Kara Lawson's US squad — carrying a 66-game winning streak in Olympic and World Cup play, with Caitlin Clark, Paige Bueckers and Angel Reese making major-tournament debuts alongside Breanna Stewart and Aliyah Boston — opens against China, per NBC Sports.
The pool and the track: form, not berths — yet
Swimmers and sprinters cannot qualify until the 2028 US trials, but the form lines are unmistakable. At August's Pan Pacific Championships in Irvine, Kate Douglass set a 50m freestyle world record (23.19), Katie Ledecky won the 1500m free, and Gretchen Walsh and Katharine Berkoff stacked up championship and American records, per NBC Sports. On the track, Noah Lyles (9.79, a world lead) and Sha'Carri Richardson (10.77) won the US 100m titles in July, per LetsRun.
The watchlist tightens from here: Berlin this week, basketball's next qualifying window in late autumn, and the long build to the trials.