Explained: How to qualify for 2028 LA Olympics in Archery?

The Olympic Qualification System (OQS) for archery at the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games has been officially confirmed by World Archery.

The archery program in 2028 is going to be extra special for India with a new event in compound mixed team added to the roster.

India boasts a strong track record in compound archery and is optimistic of securing its first-ever Olympic medal in the sport.

Events & Quota

With the addition of the compound mixed team event, the archery program at LA will be the biggest ever, with six medal events – 5 in recurve & one compound.

However, despite the addition of one event, the total number of quotas will remain the same as it was in the Paris Olympics: 128 archers - 64 men and 64 women.

To consolidate the compound quotas, the World Archery has decided to drop the men’s and women’s recurve team field from 12 to 8 teams each.

This meant that 12 quotas each from the men’s and women’s teams are now allocated to the 12 mixed teams of the compound archery programme.

Meanwhile, individual recurve quota places remain at 28 per gender, maintaining fair opportunities for athlete qualification through multiple competition pathways.

Here is the list of the number of quotas available per event

Recurve Archery:

Compound Mixed Team Quota:

Note: One recurve team quota = 3 Individual recurve Quotas

Olympic Qualifying Tournaments

Host quota & Universality quotas

The host country will earn one quota each in the men's and women's recurve team event as well as in the compound mixed team event.

This also meant that they will have 3 athletes each in the individual recurve event, and can also form one recurve mixed team from those team quotas.

Meanwhile, there is no universality quota in any of the team events in recurve or compound, but there will be 2 individual quotas per NOC in recurve archery.

World Championships 

The 2027 World Archery Championships will award the largest number of quotas, 3 each in recurve team events and 3 quotas in the compound mixed team event.

After the team events, World Archery will also award 3 quotas per gender in the recurve individual event to those NOCs who haven't won a team quota.

However, there will be a country cap of one athlete per NOC in these individual quotas. This means that a country can only have one individual quota per gender.

Continental Championships

The three continental champions of the recurve team events in Asia, Europe and Pan-America will earn a team quota per gender.

Note: If the champion team already have the quota from the World Championships, it will be awarded to the next best nation in the overall standings and so on.

Continental Games

The winner of the mixed team events in both recurve and compound events will be awarded one individual quota per gender on each of the five continents.

If the mixed team event was not included in the programme of the Continental Games, the mixed team place would be allocated at the respective continental championships.

Alongside that, there will be two extra quotas from the Individual event of the Continental Games for the non-quota winner NOCs in Europe, Asia and Pan-America.

Continental Qualifiers

Each of the five Continents -Europe, Asia, Pan-America, Africa and Oceania - will held their continental qualifiers, which offer only Individual recurve quotas.

Europe will award quota places to the top 3 athletes per gender, while Asia, Pan-America, and Africa each get 2, and Oceania will have only 1.

World Rankings

The biggest change in the qualification process from the last edition of the Paris Olympics is that there is no ranking-based quota in the recurve archery this time.

For the Indian recurve teams, it becomes a little more difficult, as the last time at the Paris Olympics, both the Indian teams qualified via the ranking quota only.

However, in the compound archery, there will be two spots per gender on the world ranking for the teams that haven't qualified yet from the above mentioned events.

World Qualifiers

The final qualifying tournament is the World Qualifiers, which will determine the last remaining quota in the men's recurve team, women's recurve team and compound mixed team.

Only the NOCs that have not qualified for the LA Olympics in the respective event earlier will be able to field one team in these qualifiers.

After the finalisation of team quotas, there will be a qualifier for individual recurve event for the remaining countries, having 2 quotas per gender with a country cap of 1 athlete.