Get your LA business ready for 2028.
The world arrives in July 2028. Here's what LA small businesses can do now: one new licensing program for local makers, the rules every business needs to know, and the free ways to get found.
Games in LA is not affiliated with LA28, the IOC, the USOPC or any team or organizer. This is general information, not legal advice.
Mile markers.
Made for Two-Eight.
On October 20, 2026, LA28 announced a licensing program that lets small local businesses become official licensees and put the LA28 emblem on products they make here.
- Your products are made or created at a physical facility in LA County. The City of LA comes first.
- Your materials come from LA County where you can.
- You're a small business under the U.S. Small Business Administration's size standards.
- Applications open October 30, 2026, through RAMP, the Regional Alliance Marketplace for Procurement.
- For the first month, only businesses making products inside the City of LA are reviewed. Then it opens to the rest of the county.
- Applications close in February 2027. Licensees are announced in July 2027.
- Licenses are by category and for a set time: from about one year out through the end of the Paralympic Games in August 2028.
Not a maker? Restaurants, barbershops, bars and shops mostly can't apply. The next two sections are for you.
What you can say without a license.
The Games' names, symbols and phrases are protected by federal law, and the protection is wider than normal trademarks. A menu, a window sign or a post can get a business in trouble even without a logo on it.
- "Olympic", "Olympian", "Olympiad", "Paralympic" and the like, in names, menus, specials or ads
- The rings, the torch, the flame, the motto
- "LA28" and "LA 2028" style marks, and official hashtags in paid posts
- "Official", "sponsor", "presents" next to the Games
- Athletes' names or photos, team marks, and photos or footage from the Games
- Anything that makes it look like you're connected when you're not
- "Game day" and "game-day specials"
- "The world's coming to LA" and "Summer in LA"
- "Welcome" in your visitors' languages
- Your neighborhood, your street, your menu, your story
- "Watch the games here", without logos or event names
Cases turn on the details. If you're planning anything big around the Games, check the official brand guidelines and talk to an IP attorney first.
Be on the map before they land.
Visitors will look for places to eat, drink, get a cut and watch the games near where they're staying. Games in LA is a free guide built for exactly that, and it never uses protected marks.
Before summer 2028.
- Check your Google listing: hours, photos, phone, and a menu link that works.
- Put your menu or price list in at least one more language your visitors speak.
- Take cards and tap-to-pay. Visitors carry less cash.
- Go through your signs, menus and posts for the protected words above.
- If you make products in LA County, register at RAMPLA.org this fall.
- List your business free on Games in LA and print your window sign.
- Plan your hours and staff for July and August 2028.
- Start posting game-day content well before the summer, at your usual pace.