The first two-stadium opening night in Summer Games history
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On July 14, 2028, the Summer Olympics will open in two stadiums at the same time. LA28 has confirmed that the opening ceremony will be shared between the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in Exposition Park and SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.
No Summer Olympics has opened across two venues before. The Coliseum, host in 1932 and 1984, becomes the first venue in history to stage events at three Olympic Games. SoFi Stadium makes its Olympic debut the moment the ceremony begins.
The closing ceremony is set for July 30, 2028, at the Coliseum alone. Opening night is the shared one, and that is where the torch relay ends.
The format follows the competition schedule. LA28 is flipping the traditional order of the Games' two biggest sports: athletics moves to the first week, staged at the Coliseum, and swimming moves to the second week, staged at SoFi Stadium. Both ceremony venues are also competition venues, so opening night introduces the two buildings the world will be watching for the rest of the Games.
One stadium is a 1923 bowl with two Olympics behind it. The other is the newest big stadium in American sports, hosting the Olympics for the first time.
LA28 has not announced where the torch relay actually ends.
The 2028 relay will cross all 50 states over more than three months and arrive at the opening ceremony on July 14, 2028. Which stadium receives the final torchbearer? Is there one cauldron or two? Does the flame appear in both buildings, and if so, how does it cover the miles between Exposition Park and Inglewood? Who lights it? None of that has been announced.
Milano Cortina 2026 ran a Winter Games with two official cauldrons in two cities, and I covered what that experiment signals for LA. A two-stadium opening night would suit a two-part flame. That is my reading, not an announcement, and LA28 may not have decided yet.
One of the two buildings already has the most storied cauldron in American Olympic history.
The Coliseum's cauldron was built for the 1932 Games and sits atop the peristyle at the stadium's east end. In 1932 there was no torch relay to feed it; the relay debuted at Berlin in 1936. Los Angeles lit a symbolic Olympic fire that burned above the peristyle for the length of those Games.
In 1984 the same cauldron got its relay. Gina Hemphill, granddaughter of Jesse Owens, carried the torch into the stadium and around the track, then handed it to decathlon champion Rafer Johnson. Johnson climbed the steep peristyle steps, touched his torch to an ignition rig, and fire raced up through the Olympic rings to the 1932 cauldron above. His climb changed who gets to light Olympic flames, and it finished the relay that reinvented the tradition.
SoFi, on the other side of the city, has no Olympic past at all.
Not announced. LA28 has confirmed the relay arrives at the opening ceremony on July 14, 2028, and that the ceremony spans both stadiums. Which building hosts the final steps, and where the cauldron lighting happens, remains open.
Possibly. Milano Cortina 2026 did it at a Winter Games. For LA it is speculation until LA28 says otherwise.
Not announced. No creative team, performers or program details have been released, so any specific names you read are guesses.
I am campaigning to carry the flame for one mile of the relay that ends at those two stadiums, and I will update this page when LA28 answers any of these questions. If you think someone deserves a mile of their own, add a nomination, and the confirmed facts are at the 50-state relay hub.