The Enhanced Games, a controversial competition for athletes using performance-enhancing drugs, has revealed the date and location of its inaugural event: May 21-24, 2026, at Resorts World Las Vegas. Athletes participating in the Games will be permitted to use substances like testosterone and anabolic steroids, typically banned in elite sports, as long as they are legal, prescribed by a doctor, and taken in safe doses. The event will feature three main sports: swimming (including 50m and 100m freestyle, and 50m and 100m butterfly), track (such as 100m sprint, 110m/100m hurdles, and 60m dash), and weightlifting (involving snatch and clean & jerk). Instead of dividing athletes by gender, they will be categorized based on their chromosomes, with an XX and XY category for each competition.

Gkolomeev recently made headlines by breaking a long-standing record in swimming. The 31-year-old Greek-Bulgarian swimmer swam the 50-meter freestyle in a record-breaking 20.89 seconds at a pool in North Carolina, surpassing a record that had stood for 16 years. The Enhanced Games will offer a total of up to $500,000 in prize money for each event, with $250,000 going to the winner, plus a $1,000,000 bonus for breaking the world record in the 100m sprint or 50m freestyle. Other world record breakers will receive a $250,000 bonus. The Games also announced the successful breaking of two 50m freestyle world records in swimming by an “enhanced athlete.”

The Enhanced Games, brainchild of Aron D’Souza, a lawyer and investor with ties to prominent figures like Peter Thiel, has stirred controversy within the sporting world. D’Souza, along with high-profile investors like Balaji Srinivisan and Christian Angermayer, aims to disrupt the traditional sports landscape by allowing the use of performance-enhancing substances and challenging established sporting bodies like the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency. D’Souza believes the Games will open up new research opportunities and redefine the perception of banned substances, which have been associated with doping scandals of the past. Additionally, the Games introduced a direct-to-consumer business, Enhanced Performance Products, set to launch this summer, providing access to performance enhancement science similar to that used by elite athletes like Gkolomeev.