Here’s what U.S. Olympic officials think about the new Utah 2034 logo

It’s going to take some time for the public to embrace the new Utah 2034 logo for the state’s next Winter Games, a U.S. Olympic leader suggested Monday.

But Gene Sykes, chair of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee board of directors, stopped short of offering an opinion on the stylized logo that’s been mocked on social media as hard to read and possibly more appropriate for a “Flintstones” cartoon.

“We can’t speak to reactions to it. We’re not design people ourselves, except to say that this is something that they spent a lot of time thinking about and I think they tried to do as effective and professional a job as possible,” Sykes told reporters during a media call.

The new look for Utah’s next Winter Games, unveiled just before the Thanksgiving holiday in a massive new art installation at the Salt Lake City International Airport, did not come as a surprise to the USOPC.

“We were definitely briefed,” Sykes said about the new logo, meant to evoke the state’s landscapes and history and showcase the formal name change from the Salt Lake City, Utah Winter Games to just the Utah Games.

He said Utah organizers had “decided that logo was representative of the entire state, including Salt Lake, and all of the other sort of characteristics of the state, from the mountains to the monuments and various significant areas of the state. That allowed the state to express itself.”

INTRODUCING UTAH 2034 🇺🇸

Designed to embrace and unite all communities across the state, we are coming together as one Utah as we celebrate 3000 days out from the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Games. #Utah2034pic.twitter.com/ceudZpMbqn

— Utah 2034 (@utah2034) November 24, 2025

The logo is intended to showcase Utah being the Winter Games host this time around. Since Salt Lake City hosted in 2002, the International Olympic Committee relaxed its rules to allow multiple cities, regions and even countries to be named hosts.

Utah’s organizers for the Olympics and Paralympics that follow for athletes with disabilities have remained enthusiastic about the logo they came up with, even if many Utahns have not. Gov. Spencer Cox has said it’s too bold for his conservative tastes.

“There was a great deal of pride on the part of the team, to have come up with something they thought was evocative of the overall state,” said Sykes, who is also an IOC member. “So they’re proud of it.”

Eventually the critics could change their minds, he said, emphasizing, too, that it’s a transitional logo, set to be replaced after the next Olympics in the United States, the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles, are over and commercial rights shift to Utah’s Winter Games.

“Historically, if you look at how logos have been received from previous Olympic efforts, often logos come out and people say, ‘Who came up with that idea?’ And some of these logos have turned out to be some of the greatest logos over time,” Sykes said.

“So it takes a bit of time sometimes to accept something that looks different.”

For now, he said everyone agrees “there is a lot of energy around Utah, and a lot of excitement about what they’re going to do and how it reflects the entire state. From that standpoint, the objectives or the energy behind the choice of this logo is something we clearly support.”

Sarah Hirshland, the CEO of the Colorado Springs-based USOPC, pointed out that the contract with the IOC to host the 2034 Games was signed by the governor on behalf of the state’s taxpayers, not Salt Lake City’s.

“The reality is, it is important that the state of Utah, who is the signatory to the host city agreement with us and the IOC, is reflected in these Games,” she said, something also “critically important to many communities, both Salt Lake and outside Salt Lake, who will be very instrumental in the success of these Games.”

Hirshland said the USOPC is “absolutely seeing the reality that it is very uncommon for an individual municipality to host the totality of a Games at this scale. It makes a lot of sense that the state and many of the communities in the state will be actively engaged and involved.”

Her take on the logo?

“I think the logo and the positioning reflects that,” she said. “So it makes a lot of sense to us.”