The World Anti-Doping Agency’s Executive Committee confirmed on Thursday that GLP-1 receptor agonists, including semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro), will not be added to the 2027 Prohibited List. The drugs will instead remain on WADA’s Monitoring Programme, a status that allows the agency to track patterns of use through testing without triggering sanctions for athletes who take them.
The 2027 list takes effect Thursday 01 January 2027 and will be reviewed annually. Semaglutide has been monitored since 2024, while tirzepatide was added this year. For a substance to move to the Prohibited List, it must meet at least two of three criteria: performance enhancement, health risk, or violation of the “spirit of sport.”
WADA’s senior director for science and medicine, Professor Olivier Rabin, urged athletes to be “very careful using those drugs” without medical supervision. A 2026 Loughborough University survey of 114 sports medicine physicians from 38 countries, covering 93 different sports, found that 12 percent were aware of athletes using GLP-1 drugs without a specific medical need, while 44 percent of the physicians supported eventually prohibiting GLP-1 drugs in sport.
For amateur cyclists, where a high power-to-weight ratio can be a pathway to the podium, and doping controls have already caught riders using banned substances such as EPO, testosterone and human growth hormone to improve that ratio, the decision keeps GLP-1s in a grey zone — not currently banned, but under increasing scrutiny as WADA studies their effects in sport.
Photo Credit: WADA
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