The first National Olympic Committee (NOC) of Somalia was formed on 12 December 1959, but the project was abandoned. In 1971 a completely new NOC was formed which was recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on 22 August 1972, at the IOC Session in München. Somalia has competed at 10 Olympic Games – those of 1972, 1984, 1988, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020. Somalia entered the 1992 Olympics, but did not compete, probably because of the famine in the country.
Until 2022, Somalia had competed only in track & field athletics, with 17 men and 5 women athletes, one each since 2000. At Tokyo 2020, Somalia entered a male track & field athlete and one female boxer for the first time.
Somalia has not competed at the Olympic Winter Games and has not yet won an Olympic medal. Abdi Bile, a former World Champion in the 1,500 metres, recorded the best Somali performance when he placed sixth in that event in 1996. The boxer from Tokyo 2020, Ramla Ali, finished equal ninth out of 21 competitors in the featherweight division, becoming the most successful female Somalian athlete.
