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Summary Background Combinations of long-acting bronchodilators are recommended to reduce the rate of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) exacerbations. It is unclear whether combining olodaterol, a long-acting beta-agonist, with tiotropium, a long-acting anti-muscarinic, reduces the rate of exacerbations compared with tiotropium alone. Methods This 52-week, double-blind, randomised, parallel-group, active-controlled trial randomly assigned (1:1) patients with COPD with a history of exacerbations using a randomised block design to receive tiotropium–olodaterol 5 μg–5 μg or tiotropium 5 μg once daily. Patients using inhaled corticosteroids continued this therapy. Treatment was masked to patients, investigators, and those involved in analysing the data. The primary endpoint was the rate of moderate and severe COPD exacerbations from the first dose of medication until 1 day after last drug administration. The primary analysis included all randomly assigned patients who received any dose of study medication but were not from a site excluded due to on-site protocol violations. The trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT02296138. Findings Overall, 9009 patients were screened from 818 centres in 51 countries. We recruited 7880 patients between Jan 22, 2015 and March 7, 2016 (mean age 66·4 years [SD 8·5], 5626 [71%] were men, mean FEV 1 percent predicted 44·5% [SD 27·7]): 3939 received tiotropium–olodaterol and 3941 tiotropium. The rate of moderate and severe exacerbations was lower with tiotropium–olodaterol than tiotropium (rate ratio [RR] 0·93, 99% CI 0·85–1·02; p=0·0498), not meeting the targeted 0·01 significance level. The proportion of patients reporting adverse events was similar between treatments. Interpretation Combining tiotropium and olodaterol did not reduce exacerbation rate as much as expected compared with tiotropium alone. Funding Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH.