Badminton became an Olympic medal sport in 1992, when it made its official debut at the Barcelona Summer Games.
Badminton had appeared earlier in Olympic settings, which causes much of the confusion around this question. It was included as a demonstration sport at Munich 1972 and returned as an exhibition sport at Seoul 1988. Those appearances did not award official Olympic medals, so they do not count as the sport's Olympic medal-sport debut.
Barcelona featured four events: men's singles, women's singles, men's doubles, and women's doubles. The tournament was held from July 28 to August 4 at the Pavelló de la Mar Bella, with 177 players representing 36 nations. Indonesia made an especially memorable entrance: Alan Budikusuma won men's singles and Susi Susanti won women's singles, giving Indonesia its first Olympic gold medals.
Another unusual feature of the inaugural tournament was that semifinal losers received bronze medals without a separate third-place playoff. Mixed doubles was added at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, completing the five-event format used for many later Games.