2028 Olympic Games in LA could feature 12 teams that aren't 'official' countries

The 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles could feature as many as 12 nations that are not globally recognised states.

The Paris Games last summer delivered a bounce-back spectacle after the unusual circumstances of the Tokyo Games three years earlier.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Olympics in Japan were delayed by a year and then held under restrictive conditions and in front of limited live spectators.

The Paris iteration of the world's biggest multi-sports competition featured a prominent Covid-related storyline, too, as United States sprint superstar Noah Lyles took bronze in the 200m despite having tested positive for Covid shortly after winning gold in the 100m.

Noah Lyles won gold in the men's 100m event and bronze in the 200m event at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. (Image: Getty)

But the event in France saw a return to Olympic normality, as Team USA and China topped the medal table with a haul of 40 goals a piece, while Japan came third with 20.

Another notable element of the Paris Olympics was that there were 207 nations taking part, despite the fact that the United Nations recognises 193 countries, plus two non-member observer states – Vatican City and Palestine.

This is because countries do not actually compete at the Olympics, but rather teams made up of athletes from National Olympic Committees (NOCs) do.

More than 10,000 athletes from 206 NOC, plus the IOC Refugee Olympic Team (EOR), took part in the Paris Games in 2024, allowing for geo-political considerations and resulting in there being more Olympic teams than there are UN-recognised countries in the world.

The 14 additional teams included two states that do not have UN recognition in Kosovo and Taiwan, as well as the Cook Islands, which is an associated state of New Zealand, and nine dependent territories that have NOCs – American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong and Aruba.

There were also two UN-recognised states that were banned from entering teams in the 2024 Olympics – Russia and Belarus – due to their involvement in the invasion of Ukraine, which raises the possibility that there could be even more teams competing at the next Olympics, in Los Angeles in 2028.