Safeguarding – Ahead of the Game: Sports Horizon Scanning 2026

Safeguarding and safe sport are rapidly climbing the agenda, both in the UK and internationally.

The UK sport sector is moving towards a unified, prevention-focused safeguarding framework with goals of (among others) establishing a new independent body to provide leadership and coordination for safe sport in the UK, and an independent complaint and resolution function for significant, sensitive and complex cases.

Internationally, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and international federations are also dedicating increasing amounts of resource and driving towards more uniformity at the international level. 

What’s happened in 2025? 

In June 2025, UK Sport published the ‘Safe Sport Report’. The report noted that (among other things) (1) the current system is fragmented, inconsistent, distrusted, lacks coherence, and has significant gaps in leadership, accountability and coordination, (2) sport is being consumed by managing cases of harm leaving limited time or resource to focus on prevention, and (3) the approach to safe sport and the systems supporting it are not person-centred leading to procedural, institutionalised and often adversarial approaches which are further harming complainants. These issues are significant, particularly when noting (for context) that Sport Resolutions’ latest annual report details that safeguarding cases made up 46.9% of its caseload in 2024/25 (compared to 9.7% in respect of anti-doping, and 8.2% in respect of ‘integrity and discipline’).

To address these challenges, the Safe Sport Report made five key recommendations:

1. Organisations should adopt an agreed set of design principles for a comprehensive and integrated safe sport system and culture
2. To develop and implement a clear framework for safe sport across the UK
3. To establish a new independent body to provide leadership and coordination for safe sport in the UK
4. To establish an independent complaint and resolution function across the UK to provide a trusted, trauma-informed and safe process to support complaints, respondents and NGBs to manage significant, sensitive and complex cases
5. To undertake a review of all current funding and delivery into safe sport to ensure it is having the maximum effect and is coordinated 

International developments also demonstrate the shift towards increased sophistication, uniformity and coordination in respect of safeguarding/safe sport. In March 2023, the IOC announced that it would create a $10 million fund per Olympiad, alongside a dedicated working group, to bring together international federations and National Olympic Committees and bridge the gap between international and local safeguarding work.

Building on this foundation, the IOC established pilot regional safeguarding hubs in Southern Africa and the Pacific Islands in October 2023 as central coordination points providing athletes with independent guidance and access to psychosocial support, legal aid and assistance through local services in the athletes’ own languages - overseen by an International Safe Sport Task Force and guided by an International Safe Sport Framework. The 2024 ‘IOC consensus statement: interpersonal violence and safeguarding in sport’ aimed to synthesis evidence on interpersonal violence and safeguarding in sport, introduce a new conceptual model of interpersonal violence in sport and offer more accessible safeguarding guidance to all within the sports ecosystem by merging evidence with insights from Olympic athletes. That consensus statement concluded that a shared responsibility between all within the sports ecosystem is required to advance effective safeguarding through future research, policy and practice.

International federations are also starting to develop globally coordinated, standardised frameworks within their sports. A relatively longstanding example is ‘FIFA Guardians’, launched in 2019, which is a programme that provides a framework for FIFA’s member associations to prevent any risk of harm to children in football and respond appropriately. More recently, in September 2025 the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) launched its ‘Safeguarding Toolkit’, with the aim of establishing core principles and minimum standards to assist its National Federations in developing and implementing robust safeguarding strategies.

Key developments and predictions for 2026

In the UK, the safe sport project will progress and conclude its next phase by March 2026, which will involve scoping out the recommendations from the report. It will include an outline of what the sports sector requires, an appraisal of the options and an implementation plan.

Particularly important early actions for the project are (1) “developing and confirming the core responsibilities, services and functions required and consider all potential delivery modes, along with a clear governance structure, resourcing and investment plan, and a final Business Case to determine the approach required to deliver the intended outcomes, and how it will be funded and be practicably deliverable”, and (2) “develop the Safe Sport Strategy, Framework and Code of Practice”.

In our view, during the course of 2026 it should be possible for sport in the UK to arrive at a consensus as to an overarching strategy and what sport seeks to achieve in respect of safeguarding/safe sport. Larger UK domestic governing bodies are genuinely world-leading in respect of safeguarding regulation, and there is a very solid basis upon which the rest of sport in the UK can learn from and adopt. However, it will be important that any consensus adequately takes into account (among other things) (1) the voices of victims/survivors and what they want sport to achieve, and (2) what sport can realistically achieve (with a view to finding a shared understanding, which in our view is likely to be some form of overarching risk management approach).

Whilst the Safe Sport Report rightly noted that sport is being consumed by managing cases of harm leaving limited time or resource to focus on prevention - and it is absolutely right to prioritise prevention – it is a sad inevitability that cases will arise, and they will continue to require significant resource (where cases do arise, the response is obviously exceptionally important in maintaining faith in any system). The key, in developing the independent complaint and resolution function, will be in making sure that significant cases can be dealt with fairly, efficiently and consistently. Until that function is set up (which will be beyond 2026), governing bodies – and particularly smaller ones – will continue to struggle with the demands and complexities of safeguarding cases for which they might well not be sufficiently equipped to address. However, with a focus on risk management and by adopting a person-centred approach, governing bodies can go a long way to addressing the problems identified in the Safe Sport Report before any centralised systems are put in place.

Funding will also be a challenge. The safe sport report noted that “Although there will be initial set up costs, it is expected that the lead entity and independent complaints and resolution function would be predominantly resourced through the better utilisation of existing funding, with other funding sources also considered”. Given the finite resources available, one hopes that the independent function will benefit from economies of scale - but it appears, realistically, that resource will need to be found from other budgets within sport (although given the importance of safeguarding/safe sport, that is something of a necessary evil).

Internationally, we expect to continue to see more International federations developing approaches to safeguarding/safe sport that can be adopted at national level, whether through guidance (such as ‘toolkits’) and/or through regulation (e.g., introducing obligations on national associations). Again, the trend will be towards uniformity.

Sports regulators will need to ensure that they are abreast of, and actively engaging with and helping shape, developments - both domestically and internationally. As safeguarding/safe sport continues to rise to the top of the agenda, participants and other stakeholders will expect (and demand) more robust safeguarding policies and regulation – both on paper and (every bit if not more importantly) in practice.

To read the full report for Ahead of the Game: Sports Horizon Scanning 2026, click here.