Are Darts in the Olympics? Why Not & When That Could Change

The Quick Answer: No, Darts Is Not in the Olympics

Darts is not an Olympic sport in 2026, and it has never appeared at any edition of the Games. It was absent from Paris 2024, where breaking (breakdancing) made its Olympic debut instead. And when the IOC approved five new sports for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics, darts was nowhere on the list. Cricket, flag football, squash, lacrosse, and baseball/softball got the nod.

That means the earliest realistic window for darts in the Olympics is Brisbane 2032. The World Darts Federation (WDF) is actively working toward that goal, and we will get into exactly where that application stands later in this article. But first, it helps to understand how darts got here.

Has Darts Ever Been in the Olympics?

No. In more than a century of the modern Olympic Games, darts has never been included, not even as a demonstration sport. Sky HISTORY lists darts among the most notable sports never to feature in the Olympics, alongside squash (until 2028), netball, and polo.

The closest darts came to building Olympic momentum was in 2005, when Sport England and the other UK Sports Councils officially recognised darts as a sport. According to darts historian Dr Patrick Chaplin, that recognition simply came too late for darts to be considered for the London 2012 Games. The window closed before the paperwork could even get moving.

Darts has appeared at multi-sport events below the Olympic level. The 2019 Southeast Asian Games in the Philippines staged medal events in darts, which proved the format works in an Olympic-style setting: national teams, medal ceremonies, and players representing their countries rather than themselves. But the five rings themselves have stayed out of reach.

Why Is Darts Not in the Olympics?

There is no single reason why darts is not an Olympic sport. There are six, and they stack on top of each other. Some are fixable. One or two are genuinely hard problems.

1. No IOC-Recognised Governing Body

This is the big one. Before a sport can even be considered for the Olympic programme, its international federation must be recognised by the International Olympic Committee. Neither the World Darts Federation nor the PDC holds that recognition. Without it, darts is not in the queue. It is not even in the building.

2. Two Organisations, One Sport

Since the professional players broke away in 1993 to form what became the PDC, darts has effectively had two worlds: the commercial professional circuit run by the PDC, and the federation-based amateur game organised under the WDF. The IOC wants one unified voice per sport. Darts currently speaks with two, and they have different priorities. The PDC is a business that runs the biggest events and pays the biggest prize money. The WDF is the traditional federation structure the IOC expects to deal with, but it does not control the sport's biggest stars.

3. The Pub Game Image

Darts grew up in pubs, and the association with beer and smoky back rooms still shapes public perception. The Olympics is cautious about sports tied closely to alcohol culture, both for sponsorship reasons and for optics. It is worth saying that this image is increasingly outdated. Modern professionals train daily, track their stats, and treat preparation the way athletes in any other sport do. We covered that whole debate in Is Darts a Sport? The Definitive Answer, and the evidence firmly supports darts as a sport.

4. Elite Depth Sits in a Handful of Countries

Darts is played in more than 70 countries, but elite darts is concentrated. Every PDC world champion in history has come from just five nations: England, Scotland, Wales, the Netherlands, and Canada. Scan the world's top 32 and you will find it dominated by British and Dutch players. The IOC looks for sports where medals are genuinely contested across continents, and darts cannot fully make that case yet, even though the gap is closing with strong players emerging from Germany, Belgium, Australia, the Philippines, Japan, and the United States.

5. The Team GB Problem

Here is a wrinkle most articles miss. In darts, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland compete as separate nations, including at the PDC World Cup of Darts. At the Olympics, they would all merge into Team GB. Combine that with Olympic quota rules, which typically cap each country at a small number of athletes per event, and the maths gets brutal. A large share of the world's best players are British. An Olympic darts event might exclude most of the top 32 simply because of their passports, which would weaken the field and the spectacle.

6. Competition for Olympic Slots

The IOC caps the total number of athletes at the Summer Games at around 10,500. Every new sport has to displace something or fit inside that ceiling, and host cities now propose additional sports that suit their market. LA 2028 picked sports with strong American appeal. Breaking made its debut at Paris 2024 and was dropped immediately afterwards, which shows how unforgiving the selection process is. Darts is competing for space against squash, cricket, karate, snooker, bowling, and dozens of other sports that all believe they deserve a lane.

Would Darts Pass the IOC Test? Try It Yourself

The IOC evaluates candidate sports against themes like governance, anti-doping, global participation, cost, and youth appeal. Before you read any further, make your own call. Go through the seven criteria below, guess whether darts meets each one today, and see how your instincts compare with where the sport actually stands.

If you went through the checker, you saw the pattern: darts passes on cost, reach, anti-doping, and youth appeal. Every failure is organisational. That is actually good news, because organisational problems can be fixed. Physical ones cannot.

What the Professionals Say

The Case For: Humphries, Van Gerwen, and Smith

The sport's biggest names want in. Luke Humphries put it plainly in 2024: "Right now, darts is probably the second or third biggest sport in our country. It's probably the biggest sport that's not in the Olympic Games, so I think it should be." Michael van Gerwen agreed that same summer: "I see other sports that are not as professional or as big as us. It's not up to me. It's up to the Olympic committee."

Former world champion Michael Smith made the commercial argument: "We're out-attending football and football's in the Olympics. Our attendance is up there. It'd earn a lot of money for the Olympic committee." Support also comes from outside darts. Sir Clive Woodward, England's Rugby World Cup winning coach, posted back in 2013 that darts is "definitely an Olympic sport" when you look at the fans, TV coverage, and skill under pressure.

The Case Against: Mardle and Part

Not everyone in darts wants Olympic status. Pundit and former professional Wayne Mardle has argued the World Championship should stay the pinnacle: "The Olympics is for Olympians, it's for people who are born physically stronger, faster and better than normal human beings. The other sports like shooting and archery shouldn't be in there either." Three-time world champion John Part shares that purist view and would rather see the Olympics trimmed down, not expanded.

When Darts Corner polled its followers on the question, 68 percent voted in favour of darts becoming an Olympic sport, with 28 percent against. The argument that keeps coming up on the "no" side is the same one Mardle makes: winning the Olympics should be the biggest thing in a sport, and in darts it would rank behind the World Championship.

Darts vs Archery and Shooting: The Double Standard

The physicality argument against darts collapses the moment you look at what is already on the programme. Shooting has been an Olympic sport since 1896. Archery joined in 1900. Both are precision sports built on stillness, breath control, repeatable mechanics, and nerve under pressure. Nobody questions their place.

A darts player throwing for two hours walks to the board and back hundreds of times and repeats a finely calibrated throwing motion under match pressure. The skill overlap with archery is obvious: a fixed target, a fixed distance, and a contest decided by millimetres. If anything, darts adds a layer archery does not have: live arithmetic. Players compute checkout routes between throws, exactly the kind of combined mental and physical test the Olympics claims to celebrate. The barrier for darts was never what happens at the oche. It is what happens in the boardroom.

Will Darts Ever Be an Olympic Sport? The Road to Brisbane 2032

The WDF is leading the formal push. It is a full member of AIMS, the Alliance of Independent Recognised Members of Sport, which is a recognised stepping stone within the international federation system. It is also a full signatory of the World Anti-Doping Agency code. Both matter, because they are prerequisite boxes on the IOC's checklist that darts has already ticked.

Progress stalled badly during the pandemic. WDF president Bill Hatter admitted that Covid effectively reset the process: the IOC changed its application procedure in the meantime, putting the WDF "back to the start of the application." The federation has said it intends to renew its push with Brisbane 2032 as the target.

Momentum outside the boardroom is the strongest it has ever been. Luke Littler reaching a World Championship final at 16 brought a wave of young fans into the sport. Attendances keep breaking records. In late 2025, a Dutch politician even sent a formal message to the IOC arguing that darts has become a genuinely international sport watched by millions. None of that replaces the governance work, but it changes the commercial case, and the modern IOC pays close attention to audiences.

A realistic assessment: darts at Brisbane 2032 is possible but not probable. IOC recognition alone usually takes years, and the PDC-WDF structure question has no quick fix. If the sport's bodies align behind a single Olympic bid, a 2030s debut is credible. If they do not, darts will keep filling arenas while watching the Games from the sofa.

What Olympic Status Would Mean for Darts

Olympic inclusion is not just a badge. It reshapes a sport's finances. National Olympic committees fund Olympic sports, which would mean money for youth programmes, coaching structures, and facilities in countries where darts barely exists today. The Tokyo 2020 Games reached over 3 billion unique viewers across TV and digital platforms. Even a fraction of that exposure would introduce darts to more new players than any World Championship ever has.

It would also complete the image shift that started when darts players began training like athletes. The modern game is already data-driven: professionals track their averages, checkout percentages, and weak segments the way sprinters track split times. You can train the same way. The Gauntlet assessment on Dartsva measures your scoring, finishing, and consistency, then a structured weekly training plan turns those numbers into a routine. Olympic sport or not, the players who improve fastest are the ones who train with structure.

Quick Takeaways

• Darts is not in the Olympics and has never appeared at any Games, not even as a demonstration sport.
• It is not coming to LA 2028. The five new sports are cricket, flag football, squash, lacrosse, and baseball/softball.
• The main blocker is governance: no IOC-recognised federation and a sport split between the PDC and the WDF.
• Physicality is not the issue. Archery and shooting are precision sports and have been Olympic events for over a century.
• Olympic quotas would hurt darts: England, Scotland, and Wales merge into Team GB, which would exclude many of the world's best players.
• Brisbane 2032 is the earliest realistic window, with the WDF renewing its application after Covid reset the process.

Where do you stand? Would an Olympic gold beat lifting the Sid Waddell Trophy at Alexandra Palace, or should the World Championship stay the pinnacle? Run the criteria checker above, form your view, and share this article with the mate who still calls darts a pub game. The debate is half the fun.

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