The Road to LA: How U.S. Swimmers Can Qualify For the 2028 Paralympics

The Opening Ceremony of the Paralympic Games in Los Angeles is still two years away, but as of Sept. 1, the countdown is officially on.

That’s the date at which results start to count and athletes can begin meeting the requirements for Paralympic eligibility for LA28. Between Sept. 1 and Aug. 15, 2028, when the Games officially kick off, Paralympic hopefuls will go on a journey that includes international meets, world championships, qualifying standards, world rankings and, eventually, the U.S. Paralympic Team Trials.

So what does the pathway to LA28 look like for a Paralympic hopeful?

Eligibility First

The first step for any athlete who wants to compete in Los Angeles will be to achieve at least one “minimum qualifying standard,” or time, at an approved international meet.

They’ll also need to compete in at least two Para Swimming World Series meets between Sept. 1, 2026, and July 1, 2028, as well as the 2027 World Para Swimming Championships. If they don’t compete at the world championships, then they must compete in a third World Series meet.

Checking off those boxes will mean that an athlete is eligible to be considered for Los Angeles.

Accumulating Quotas

The U.S. as a team will also need to earn quota spots for the Games. The swimming program in Los Angeles will include 142 medal events — 71 for men, 64 for women and seven for mixed gender. As many as 605 swimmers can qualify for Games, with 325 quotas for men and 280 for women.

The only true quick-and-easy way to a quota spot is by either winning gold or silver at the world championships. Doing so means an automatic spot in Los Angeles for the swimmer’s country.

And, in a big change from previous Games, anyone who wins a world title in 2027 automatically gets a spot — not a quota, but an actual roster spot — for the Paralympics. So while world championships have always been meaningful, next year’s gold medalists will have the added bonus of knowing they’ve punched their ticket to Los Angeles.

Of course, the world championships represent less than half of the overall quota spots.

Most of the quotas will be filled via the world rankings. Every athlete who’s achieved the minimum qualifying standard by Jan. 31, 2028, will get a weighted ranking that considers both their ranking within their classification and the relative depth of their classification. The weighted rankings will then be used to determine how many quota spots each national governing body receives. So, the better Team USA athletes do over the course of the next 18 months, the greater number of quota spots the U.S. is likely to get.

Finally, 10 quota spots — five male and five female — will be given by the official Bipartite Commission Invitation Allocation.

The maximum swimming entries for a single country are 34 men and 28 women, unless the Bipartite Commission grants an exception.

Team USA Selection

The final step will be selection by Team USA.

For Paris, U.S. Paralympics Swimming had 33 athlete quota spots — 21 for women, and 12 for men. The athletes who filled those spots were selected following the 2024 U.S. Paralympic Team Trials. However, unlike on the Olympic side, the system wasn’t as straightforward as simply having the top two finishers qualify.

Instead, team leadership created a formula to compare the results from trials to the standard of third place in the Paris MQS rankings, and then filled slots based on that team selection ranking list. There were also a few places for discretionary picks for athletes who might have experienced injury or illness at trials but whose inclusion on the Paris roster was expected to positively impact medal potential.

While U.S. Paralympics Swimming staff isn’t expected to make any announcements about the LA28 selection process until closer to the trials, you can read the full Paris procedures here.

Looking Ahead

As for the athletes who might fill out the U.S. roster?

That’s the fun of these next two years. Anything is possible. 

On the current national “A” team alone you’ll find a mix of highly decorated veterans such as Jessica Long and Mallory Weggemann, who have 10 trips to the Paralympics between them, to athletes including Koehn Boyd and Katie Kubiak, who have yet to compete at the Paralympic Games but have set world records and won world championship medals since the Paris Games and are poised to do big things in Los Angeles. The Under-23 team is filled with young up-and-comers, and then there are a vast number of reigning Paralympic champions and multiple medalists including Christie Raleigh-Crossley, Elizabeth Marks, Olivia Chambers and Leanne Smith, to name just a few.

You can find a full list of the medal events here, and the full Paralympic LA28 schedule here. 

Karen Price is a reporter from Pittsburgh who has covered Olympic and Paralympic sports for various publications. She is a freelance contributor to USParaSwimming.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.