In less than four years, Long Beach will take the international stage as a venue city for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, which city officials say will be both a massive undertaking and an opportunity to elevate the city’s status, bolster tourism and economic development — and develop a lasting gold-medal legacy that’ll benefit the town for years to come.
Though Long Beach isn’t the host city — that’s Los Angeles, of course — it will play a major role in the upcoming Games as a venue city for at least eight Olympic events, though that number could increase as plans are finalized in the future.
Long Beach, as it stands, is set to host Olympic handball, marathon swimming, triathlon, sailing, artistic swimming, water polo and four Paralympic events — the majority of which are also water-based sports, taking advantage of the city’s coastal offerings.
“As you all know, we will be a major Olympic center in 2028,” Mayor Rex Richardson said during this week’s City Council meeting. “And a lot of work has taken place over the last few years, since we brought on our consultant and engaged in our Long Beach Olympic strategic planning efforts.”
The city unveiled the early workings of those strategic planning efforts earlier this week: a more than 130-page document outlining everything that needs to happen in Long Beach between now and 2028 to ensure the city succeeds at hosting its Olympic events, and everything that comes along with them.
“This is obviously one of the biggest things that we’re planning over the next several years,” City Manager Tom Modica said during the Tuesday, Feb. 4, council meeting, “and our chance to really leave a mark on the world as the world comes to Long Beach.”
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Dubbed the Long Beach Strategic Roadmap, the planning document for the 2028 Games lays out the city’s key plans in four main phases, all of which are tied to three pillars of Long Beach’s goals — promoting equity and inclusion, ensuring public safety, and developing a lasting Olympic legacy.
The strategic roadmap, according to Deputy City Manager Tyler Bonanno-Curley, was created with the help of external consultant KMPG, which was brought on to provide large-scale event planning expertise in December 2023.
KMPG conducted more than 60 interviews with various city departments, elected officials and other stakeholders to help parse out Long Beach’s priorities for the Olympics, Bonanno-Curley said Tuesday.
“They also looked through our existing city plans, like the 2030 Strategic Vision, Elevate ’28 Infrastructure Investment Plan, (and) some of our core guiding documents,” Bonanno-Curley said, “to make sure that the plan and the roadmap that we’re developing for the Olympics and Paralympics is in line with, and will advance our other, strategic goals and priorities.”
The roadmap outlines six key objectives, which include maximizing cost recovery, legacy planning, ensuring safety and security, bolstering economic and community development, focusing on sustainable and equitable access to the Games, and operating effectively before, during and after the Olympics.
The first phase of the plan, dubbed “foundation” in the report, got underway throughout 2024 and is expected to continue this year. It largely revolved around initial planning efforts, including laying out Long Beach’s vision, governance structure, policies and processes to guide Olympic planning.
Some major accomplishments during this phase, the report said, include the approval of Long Beach’s Games Agreement as a venue city, formalizing roles and responsibilities for city staffers, building regional and state partnerships, assessing city resources, and launching community advisory groups.
The mayor announced the creation of Olympics community advisory groups at his State of the City address in January. There are currently five groups: Arts and Culture, Small Business, Workforce and Economic Inclusion, Youth Sports, and Legacy. Members have already been appointed to those groups.
The parameters for the groups — including how often they’ll meet, how the city will engage with them and the potential establishment of additional groups — are still being finalized.
“The first step is to bring folks together that have been announced as the co-chairs,” Bonnano-Curley said, “and get them up to speed also on some of the things that we’ve been working on with the strategic roadmap.”
After the operational phase is over, Long Beach will begin to act on the plans they’ve made for the Olympics.
“The next phase is where we shift from planning to implementation, which we anticipate starting actually now then going into 2027,” said Jorge Godinez, assistant to the city manager.
The two-year operational phase, the roadmap said, will largely focus on ensuring Long Beach has the capacity to provide the municipal services required of them as a venue city, conducting community outreach, and developing programs for other Olympic-related city goals.
“During this phase, we’ll be finalizing the additional municipal agreements with LA28 to define our city obligations,” Godinez said Tuesday. “Departments will develop their game time operational plans, will continue to coordinate closely with transit, public safety and emergency response agencies, (and) will be rolling out the legacy programs (that) will be developed in the foundation phase.”
The testing and delivery phase of the Strategic Roadmap, which will get underway from early 2027 through spring 2028, will include myriad tests leading up to the Olympics, including public safety and security training exercises, test events at Long Beach venues, final touches on plans — and, of course, the successful delivery of the city’s Olympic events.
“This phase will focus on readiness and final preparations,” Godinez said. “We will be conducting citywide exercises to test emergency response and logistics, supporting test events in 2027 to evaluate operational plans, refining final staffing and contingency plans, shifting to integrated venue operations, and then launching our community activations and public celebrations.”
And finally, once the Olympic and Paralympic Games have concluded, Long Beach will move into the fourth and final phase of the Strategic Roadmap — dissolution.
Alongside decommissioning city-owned venues and the “look of the Games” — such as banners and other Olympics-related branding — after the event, the dissolution phase will also include an effort to archive records and other information related to the Olympics.
This phase will last through 2029, Godinez said, and will also include efforts to reconcile finances with LA28, alongside closing out any pending legal matters and contracts related to the Olympics, and distributing any leftover sports equipment to local schools, sports organizations and colleges.
A key part of the final phase is legacy planning — ensuring that Long Beach can derive lasting benefits from hosting Olympic events.
“The 2028 games really represent a transformative opportunity to showcase Long Beach globally,” Godinez said, “support inclusive economic growth, and create those lasting legacy benefits for residents and businesses.”
Part of the plan could include establishing the Long Beach Olympics Legacy Foundation, which would serve a similar purpose as the LA84 Foundation, which still provides funding to youth programs in the Southern California region.
“This proposed fund, the Long Beach Olympics Legacy Foundation, aims to leverage existing philanthropic resources to sustain initiatives in youth sports and arts and culture programming,” a city staff report said, “ensuring the impact of the Games extends well beyond 2028.”
Long Beach will study the feasibility of establishing that fund in the coming years, with community engagement and input from a future advisory group.
“A lot of work has taken place to get here and think through things — things may come up that we hadn’t thought of, but we are well ahead of every other venue city having done this work,” Richardson said. “We fully anticipate new things will be put on the table, and we’re ready for that.”
Long Beach, meanwhile, will continue sharing additional information with the public as the city bolsters its Olympics-related community engagement efforts.
The city has also created an Olympics-specific landing page on its website to help keep residents informed about any Games-related updates and answer common questions.
Visit longbeach.gov/2028games to learn more.
