For nearly two centuries, Squash has lived just outside the spotlight — a sport beloved by players, respected for its brutal fitness demands, yet often overlooked on the world’s biggest sporting stages. That changes in 2028.
After decades of near-misses, squash will finally make its Olympic debut in Los Angeles, capping a long journey from a Victorian prison yard to a global sport whose growth edge now runs through the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa as much as its traditional strongholds.
From Prison Walls to Prep Schools
Squash’s origin story is delightfully unglamorous. It began in the 1830s at Harrow School in England, evolving from a game called “rackets” that was, in turn, first played by inmates in London’s Fleet Prison, who batted a ball against the exercise yard walls to pass the time. Harrow schoolboys discovered that a softer ball — one that “squashed” on impact — produced a slower, more tactical game requiring more shot-making than raw power. The name stuck, and so did the sport.
By the late 19th century, purpose-built squash courts were appearing at British schools and gentlemen’s clubs, and the game spread through the British Empire along colonial trade and military routes — into Egypt, India, the Caribbean, and East and West Africa. That imperial footprint, oddly enough, planted the seeds for squash’s future power bases, several of which are only now coming into full bloom.
Building a Global Sport
International governance didn’t arrive until the 20th century was well underway. In January 1967, representatives from nine founding nations — Australia, Great Britain, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, the United States, Canada, and the United Arab Republic — met in London to form the International Squash Rackets Federation, which later became the World Squash Federation, now branded simply as World Squash.
World Squash today counts 115 member national associations, organised into five continental federations, working alongside the Professional Squash Association (PSA), which runs the professional tour. That regional structure matters — it’s the backbone that lets nations far from squash’s old European centres build their own pathways to the top.
Egypt: The Modern Powerhouse
No nation has reshaped squash’s competitive order more than Egypt. Entering the sport through colonial-era clubs in Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt has become the sport’s unrivalled dominant force this century. Egyptians have won seven of the last eight men’s world titles. In contrast, Nour El Sherbini has won seven women’s world titles, finishing runner-up on three further occasions — often in finals against fellow Egyptians like Nouran Gohar. Egypt’s rise proves what focused national investment in coaching and junior pathways can do to a sport once dominated by a handful of Commonwealth nations, and it has become the model that emerging federations elsewhere now study and try to replicate.
The Caribbean: Small Islands, Big Ambition
The Caribbean has quietly built one of squash’s most active regional ecosystems, coordinated through the Caribbean Area Squash Association (CASA), which runs annual junior and senior team championships across the islands.
Guyana has emerged as the region’s current standard-bearer. Guyana’s National Senior Men’s and Women’s squash teams have dominated the CASA championships for four consecutive years, backed by real estate investment — the government commissioned a new dedicated squash building at the National Racquet Centre, including a state-of-the-art doubles court, in February 2025. That infrastructure paid off in a very literal sense in late 2025: when Hurricane Melissa forced Jamaica to relinquish hosting duties for the Senior CASA Championships, Guyana stepped in on just 15 days’ notice, demonstrating a level of organisational readiness few small nations could match. Over 120 athletes from nine Caribbean territories competed in the relocated event, which also served as a qualifier for the 2026 Central American and Caribbean Games.
Jamaica, despite the hurricane setback, remains one of the region’s traditional squash centres, with a long-running national championship (the All-Jamaica Squash Championships) that has produced generations of regional talent. Barbados rounds out the Caribbean’s traditional “big three” — historically Guyana’s fiercest rival, Barbados has repeatedly split team titles with Guyana at CASA junior and senior events over the years, and remains a consistent medal contender across age groups.
What makes the Caribbean’s story compelling ahead of LA28 is the direct line regional federations are drawing between Olympic inclusion and local participation. Regional development voices have specifically flagged Barbados, Jamaica, and Guyana as territories eyeing squash’s 2028 Olympic inclusion as an opportunity to grow participation among young people — a rare case of small-island sports federations treating an LA Games seven time zones away as a genuine grassroots recruiting tool.
Africa Beyond Egypt: A Continent on the Move
While Egypt dominates the world rankings, the rest of the continent is building depth through the Squash Federation of Africa (SFA), founded in 1992 and based in Johannesburg, currently comprising 19 member federations across Africa and the Indian Ocean islands.
Uganda has become one of the continent’s most energetic development stories. In November 2025, the Uganda Squash Federation hosted the sport’s first-ever Squash Federation of Africa Seniors’ Championship in Kampala — a genuinely continental gathering, with confirmed participation from Zambia, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Ghana, South Africa, Namibia, Congo, and Rwanda alongside the Ugandan hosts, out of more than 20 nations expected to eventually take part. The event carried real financial weight for a developing squash market too, with $15,000 in prize money on offer — a signal that Uganda is positioning itself as a genuine regional hub rather than just a participant.
Uganda has also been investing at the grassroots level: Nantambi Shifah recently became the country’s first-ever World Squash Coaching accredited coach, a small but meaningful step toward building sustainable local coaching capacity rather than relying on imported expertise.
Nigeria, whose national federation dates back to 1974, has spent recent years rebuilding its domestic structures after a period of dormancy — the Nigerian Squash Federation held a special webinar aimed at relaunching the sport nationally, and grassroots clubs like the Jacob Esuene Sports Club have used squash as a vehicle for youth development in local communities, echoing the life-skills-through-sport model that has worked well in Egypt and South Africa.
The Republic of Congo remains a smaller but active presence in African squash, fielding a national team at continental championships like the Uganda 2025 event — modest by medal-table standards, but part of the wider push by the Squash Federation of Africa to widen participation beyond the continent’s traditional hubs of Egypt and South Africa.
The Long Road to the Olympics
Squash’s Olympic ambitions are almost as old as the modern Games’ expansion era. The sport was rejected from Olympic inclusion on four separate occasions — bids for 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012 all fell short. The breakthrough finally came for the 2028 Los Angeles Games, where squash was approved as one of five new sports added to the program.
Competitions will consist of two events — men’s individual and women’s individual — with 16-player draws in each, staged at a temporary venue built for the Games: the Comcast Squash Centre on the Universal Studios lot in Universal City, California, from 15 to 24 July 2028.
How Qualification Works — and Why It Matters for Emerging Nations
The Olympic Qualification System (OQS), approved by the IOC in February 2026, is explicitly built to balance elite performance against broad global representation. Each 16-player draw fills through five routes:
- Continental Games winners (5 places) — gold medalists from the Asian, European, Pan American, African, and Pacific Games
- Host country quota (1 place) — guaranteeing the USA at least one entrant per gender
- PSA World Rankings (8 places) — the highest-ranked eligible players
- Universality place (1 place) — reserved for nations outside squash’s traditional powerhouses
- Final World Qualifying Tournament (1 place)
Crucially, a maximum of three nations will be allowed two players per draw, with all others limited to one — meaning only two Egyptians can qualify per gender, no matter how many sit inside the world’s top rankings. That cap, combined with the African Games and Pan American Games each producing a guaranteed Olympic qualifier, opens a realistic door for a Ugandan, Nigerian, Guyanese, or Jamaican athlete to reach Los Angeles — something that would have been almost unthinkable under a purely rankings-based system.
What Olympic Inclusion Means Going Forward
For federations in Kampala, Lagos, Georgetown, and Bridgetown, LA28 isn’t an abstraction — it’s a funding and visibility argument they can finally make to national governments and sponsors. Olympic status tends to unlock exactly the kind of state investment Guyana has already shown works: new courts, coaching accreditation, and sponsorship interest from companies eager to be associated with a “next big thing” sport.
The symbolism is fitting. A game invented by bored prisoners and refined by British schoolboys is about to be played, on the world’s largest stage, by athletes from Kampala and Georgetown as much as Cairo and London. Squash’s Olympic debut won’t just crown a new sport — it’s already reshaping which nations see a future in it.