A total of 13 nations have ever been officially banned from the Olympics, with reasons often connected to wars and violations of human rights, but also to breaking International Olympic Committee rules. As the 2026 Winter Olympics are set to kick off Friday in Northern Italy, Russia and Belarus are once again not taking part as nations even though a small number of individual athletes who are not in support of the countries' invasion of Ukraine will still participate. While since 2024, Russians and Belarussians are competing as Individual Neutral Athletes (AINs), they had previously taken part as Olympic Athletes from Russia and under the flag of the Russian Olympic Committee, abbreviated ROC.
While Belarus has been banned due to the war since 2024, Russia has been excluded for this reason since 2022 and previously between 2016 and 2020 due to its state-sponsored doping campaign being uncovered. Russia and Germany are the only two countries banned twice in the modern age, with Germany excluded in the aftermath of World War I and World War II.
World War I saw the biggest list of exclusions, with Turkey, Hungary, Austria and Bulgaria banned in 1920 in addition to Germany. After World War II, Japan was the only other additional nation uninvited.
In between the 1960s and 1980s, two African nations – South Africa and Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) – were excluded for several years due to their governments' policies of racial segregation. While Zimbabwe was officially only banned 1972 and 1976, its athletes were denied entry into Mexico already for the Summer Games in 1968. In the year 2000, Afghanistan was excluded from the Sydney games due to the Taliban's ban of women in sports. With the group back in power since 2021, the country avoided a ban narrowly in 2024 as Afghan female athletes from the diaspora joined the Olympic team competing under the nation's pre-Taliban green, red and black flag.
More recently, Kuwait and North Korea received bans from the IOC for rule violations, with Kuwait handing over too many powers to their minister of sports and North Korea withdrawing their athletes from the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 due to Covid-19 concerns – something that is also not allowed under the Olympic governing body's rules. While athletes from both nations, similar to Belarus and Russia now, had the option to still compete in those years under a different banner, North Korea declined this option for its participants in 2022.
