Olympic football

The tournaments are part of the Olympic Games and are played under Olympic rules, with FIFA responsible for the football regulations and competition framework. Both a men's and a women's tournament are played at each Games, with teams qualifying through their confederations in the years before. The matches are spread across the Olympic host country's stadia and are played in parallel with the rest of the Games.

The men's tournament uses different eligibility rules from the senior World Cup. Squads are mostly made up of players aged 23 or under, with each team allowed to call up three older players. The women's tournament has no age restriction and is contested by senior national teams, making it one of the strongest competitions in women's international football.

The men's Olympic tournament was once open to professionals of any age, but FIFA was concerned that two equally strong tournaments — the World Cup and the Olympics — would dilute each other. In 1992 the men's competition became an under-23 event. Each squad can include up to three over-age players, a rule introduced in 1996 to give teams the option of a few experienced figures alongside the younger core.

The result is a tournament that shows off the next generation of international players. Many leading footballers have appeared at the Olympics before becoming established senior international players, and the tournament is widely regarded as a stepping stone rather than a direct rival to the senior international game. Club release can also affect the strength of men's Olympic squads, especially when clubs are reluctant to release over-age players or players who have already been involved in a busy summer of senior international football.

Unlike the men's event, the women's Olympic tournament is not restricted to under-23 players. It is contested by senior national teams, so countries can select established international players as well as younger players. That gives the competition a status closer to the FIFA Women's World Cup and the major continental championships than to the development-focused men's Olympic event.

The women's tournament was first played at Atlanta 1996 and has been part of every Summer Olympics since. Because the field has traditionally been smaller than the Women's World Cup, qualification can be very demanding, especially in confederations with several strong women's national teams. The smaller format also means leading teams can face difficult group-stage matches much earlier than they might in a larger World Cup.

The tournament is particularly important because it sits inside the wider Olympic Games. A gold medal is not just a football title, but an Olympic medal won for a national Olympic team. That gives the competition a different feel from the Women's World Cup, even though many of the same players and national teams are involved.

At Paris 2024 and other recent editions, the men's tournament featured 16 teams, split into four groups of four. The top two from each group went through to a quarter-final, with the tournament continuing as a knockout from there to the final, plus a bronze-medal play-off. The women's tournament used 12 teams, split into three groups of four with the top two from each group plus the two best third-placed teams advancing to the quarter-finals. From Los Angeles 2028, the balance changes: the women's tournament is due to expand to 16 teams while the men's tournament reduces to 12, making the women's competition larger than the men's for the first time.

Knockout matches level after 90 minutes go to extra time and then a penalty shoot-out. Unlike most international tournaments, the Olympics awards medals to the top three teams in each competition — gold for the winners, silver for the runners-up and bronze for the team that wins the third-place match. The medals are part of the wider Olympic tradition rather than a feature of football specifically.

The football competition starts a day or two before the official opening ceremony of the Olympics and runs across most of the Games' two-week schedule, with the finals played in the second week. The 2020 tournament was postponed to 2021 along with the rest of the Tokyo Olympics, but otherwise the four-year cycle has been consistent.

The summer schedule of the Olympics often clashes with international tournaments. In years when the Olympics fall in the same summer as the Euros or Copa América, players involved in those tournaments are usually not selected for the Olympic team — particularly the over-age players, who are most likely to be playing in the senior competition.

Each confederation uses its own route into the Olympic tournament. In the men's competition, places are often decided through age-group continental tournaments, such as the UEFA Under-21 Championship or AFC Under-23 Asian Cup, or through dedicated Olympic qualifying competitions. The top finishers from those qualifying routes earn places at the Olympics.

The host nation usually qualifies automatically. In the women's tournament, places are normally decided through senior national-team qualifying routes, such as continental tournaments, Nations League-style routes, or dedicated Olympic qualifying competitions. The full allocation of places per confederation is set for each edition and can vary between tournaments, which is one reason the Olympic field can feel more selective than the World Cup field.

Football was an exhibition event at the 1900 and 1904 Games, then became a full medal sport at the 1908 Olympics in London. Great Britain dominated the early tournaments, winning gold three times in the first four Games. The 1932 Olympics were the only Summer Games not to include football, partly because of the launch of the FIFA World Cup two years earlier.

Uruguay's wins in 1924 and 1928 set up the launch of the World Cup in 1930. After the Second World War, the men's tournament was dominated by Eastern European teams, which fielded amateur players in line with Olympic rules but in practice operated as professional national teams. The opening of the competition to professionals in 1984, and the introduction of the under-23 rule in 1992, ended that era and shifted the men's tournament towards the development-focused event it is today. The women's tournament was added at Atlanta 1996 and has been played as a senior international tournament at every Games since.

In the pre-1984 era, Eastern European teams — Hungary, the Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia — won most of the men's gold medals. Since the under-23 format was introduced in 1992, the winners have been a wider mix, including Spain twice, Nigeria, Cameroon, Argentina twice, Mexico and Brazil twice. Brazil's wins in 2016 and 2020 ended a long period in which the country had never won Olympic gold despite five World Cup titles.

The women's tournament has been more concentrated. The United States has won more gold medals than any other nation, including at Paris 2024, while Norway, Germany and Canada have also won the competition. Brazil, Sweden and Japan are among the nations that have reached Olympic finals without yet winning gold. With no age restriction and most leading women's footballers available, the Olympic women's tournament is one of the strongest women's competitions in the sport.