The International Olympic Committee has lifted all restrictions on Belarusian athletes, recommending that international sports federations allow them to compete freely under their own flag and anthem, including in team sports and qualification events for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. The decision, announced on Thursday by the IOC's executive board in Lausanne, Switzerland, marks a significant shift for Belarusian sport, which has faced sanctions since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with Belarus having served as a staging ground for the assault.

Since 2023, athletes from both Russia and Belarus could compete only as carefully vetted neutrals — with no links to the military or the war — in individual events and without their national flags. A total of 32 athletes from the two countries competed under those conditions at the 2024 Paris Olympics and the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, winning five medals combined, including one gold in trampoline by a Belarusian athlete. The IOC had taken a first step toward easing these measures in December 2025, urging federations to readmit Russian and Belarusian youth athletes under 23 without restrictions.

The new recommendation does not extend to Russian athletes, for whom restrictions remain in place. The Russian Olympic Committee has been suspended by the IOC since October 2023, after it incorporated regional sports bodies in Russian-occupied areas of eastern Ukraine — Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — a move the IOC said violated the Olympic Charter and the territorial integrity of Ukraine's Olympic Committee. An ongoing World Anti-Doping Agency investigation into alleged manipulation of doping controls, involving a senior official at Russia's national anti-doping agency, has added a further obstacle. IOC President Kirsty Coventry said there was no specific timeline for a decision on Russia's potential return, while acknowledging "constructive discussions" with the Russian Olympic Committee.

Despite the IOC's recommendation, individual sports bodies retain the authority to make their own decisions, and not all are expected to follow immediately. World Athletics confirmed that its own sanctions against Belarusian and Russian athletes, in place since March 2022, would remain until there is "tangible movement towards peace negotiations."

The decision matters because it signals a gradual recalibration of the IOC's approach to the conflict's impact on sport, with qualifying for the Los Angeles Games beginning later this year. The IOC reiterated its long-standing principle that athletes should not be penalised for the actions of their governments, a position that will continue to be tested as the war in Ukraine persists and the question of Russia's return to the global sporting stage remains unresolved.