Safeguarding children’s rights in sport has emerged as an important topic at the intersection of children’s rights, sports law, and public policy, receiving increasing attention from researchers and international organizations in recent years. Accordingly, the present study aimed to identify and elucidate the dimensions of safeguarding children’s rights in sport through bibliometric analysis and thematic analysis of scientific studies. This qualitative study was conducted in two stages. In the first stage, a bibliometric analysis was performed on 7,700 articles indexed in the Scopus database from 1976 to December 15, 2025. Following two stages of screening, 174 international articles and four relevant domestic articles were selected for analysis. The bibliometric analysis was conducted using VOSviewer, the R programming language, and RStudio. In the second stage, the data were analyzed using Braun and Clarke’s six-phase thematic analysis approach and MAXQDA2020 software. The findings resulted in the identification of 26 subthemes and seven main themes: legislation, policy-making, identification of harms and risk factors, cultural and social factors, education and primary prevention, protection, and participation. The results indicated that safeguarding children’s rights in sport is a multidimensional concept whose realization requires synergy among legal frameworks, protective policies, organizational culture, stakeholder education, monitoring mechanisms, and meaningful child participation. Accordingly, the conceptual framework derived from this study can provide a basis for developing policies, revising laws and regulations, and establishing comprehensive safeguarding mechanisms for children’s rights in sport settings.