2026 Winter Olympics
The 2026 Winter Olympics, officially the XXV Winter Olympic Games and commonly known as Milano Cortina 2026, is an upcoming international multi-sport event scheduled to take place from 6 to 22 February 2026 at sites across Lombardy and Northeast Italy.
A joint bid by Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo was awarded the 2026 Winter Olympics at the 134th IOC Session on 24 June 2019, beating another joint bid made by Stockholm and Åre, Sweden; they will be the first Olympic Games to be officially co-hosted by two cities, with Milan primarily hosting ice events, and the remaining events being hosted in clusters around Cortina, and the Valtellina and Fiemme valleys. They will mark the third Winter Olympics, and fourth overall, to be hosted by Italy; Cortina d'Ampezzo previously hosted the 1956 Winter Olympics.
The Games will feature the debut of ski mountaineering as a Winter Olympic event, and will be the first Olympic Games under the IOC presidency of Kirsty Coventry.
Bidding process
Host city selection
Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo were selected as the host cities on 24 June 2019 at the 134th IOC Session in Lausanne, Switzerland. The three Italian IOC members, Franco Carraro, Ivo Ferriani and Giovanni Malagò, and two Swedish IOC members, Gunilla Lindberg and Stefan Holm, were ineligible to vote as stated in the Olympic Charter.Development and preparations
Venues
The Games will primarily utilize existing venues across Lombardy and Northeast Italy, including those used by the 1956 Winter Olympics previously held in Cortina d'Ampezzo, and by the 2013 Winter Universiade hosted by the province of Trentino. Most ice events, aside from curling, will be held in the Milan cluster, while sliding and snow events will be held in clusters around Cortina, Valtellina and the Fiemme Valley.A new 16,000-seat multi-use arena designed by David Chipperfield is being constructed in Milan's Santa Giulia district, which will host ice hockey. Stadio San Siro will host the opening ceremony, while the historic Verona Arena will host the closing ceremony.
Athletes will be hosted in several Olympic villages including the central Milan and the Cortina d'Ampezzo Olympic Village, the latter consisting of hotels.
Milan Cluster
Cortina d'Ampezzo Cluster
Valtellina Cluster
Val di Fiemme Cluster
Verona
Speed skating venue selection
During the bidding process, the bidding committee proposed that the speed skating events could be held at the existing Ice Rink Piné in Baselga di Piné. However, despite the infrastructure being ready, it required a roof which impact and cost studies indicated would be costly, potentially exceeding the budget. So instead, the committee deliberated over three choices: building an ice rink in the pavilions of Fiera Milano, options that would require significant structural work, or move the events to the Oval Lingotto in the city of Turin which required no structural changes. The venue was constructed to host the speed skating during the 2006 Winter Olympics and after the Games, has hosted a variety of events such as exhibitions, fairs and conferences. The venue hosted the same sport in 2007 Winter Universiade. In April 2023, it was estimated that the temporary ice rink in Fiera Milano would cost nearly €20 million, which would be paid for with private funds. The proposal to use Turin's Oval Lingotto received opposition from Milan-area officials, as Turin was part of the initial stages of the project, but later withdrawn. One of the spokespersons to reject this proposal was the Milan mayor Giuseppe Sala and officials from the host regions of Lombardy and Veneto. Fiera Milano was confirmed as the speed skating venue on 19 April 2023.Olympic torch
The Olympic torch relay started on 26 November 2025 with the flame lighting in Olympia, Greece, and concludes on 6 February 2026 in Milan, Italy, coinciding with the opening ceremony at Stadio San Siro. Along with the 13 regional units and seven regions in Greece, the flame is scheduled to also visit the 110 provinces of Italy, making 60 stops over 63 days across.The Olympic torch was presented in a simultaneous event held in Milan, Italy and Osaka, Japan. It was revealed at the Triennale di Milano and at the Italian pavilion at Expo 2025 as a way of connecting the two twin cities, as Milan previously hosted Expo 2015. The torch is light blue whereas the corresponding Paralympic torch is bronze. Named "Essential"; developed by Eni and its subsidiary Versalis, designed by Studio Carlo Ratti Associati and produced in Italy by Cavagna Group, the torches are made primarily of an alloy of recycled aluminium and bronze. They run bio-LPG, a fuel made from renewable materials, produced at the biorefinery in Gela, and have been designed to be refilled up to ten times in order to cut down on the number of torches produced.
Following the lighting of the Olympic flame in Olympia, a handover ceremony happened in Athens on 4 December 2025, where the flame then arrived in Rome to visit all 110 provinces of Italy, making 60 stops over 63 days across and involving 10,001 torchbearers. The torch will be in Naples for Christmas, in Bari for New Year's Eve, and in Cortina d'Ampezzo on 26 January to commemorate 70th anniversary since it hosted the 1956 Winter Olympics. While the torch is in Piedmont, a tribute is planned for skier Matilde Lorenzi, who died while training in October 2024. The torch relay plans to visit every World Heritage Site in the country. On 29 November 2024, Italian comedy trio were announced as official narrators for the torch relay.
Medals
On 15 July 2025, the official medals of the Games were unveiled in Venice, designed as two halves that symbolise the culmination of an athlete and Para athlete’s journey and of all those who have walked beside them along the way, it was created by the Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato. The medals featured an essential design that places emotion and teamwork at its core, they had the traditional Olympic five-ring symbol on one side, with an inscription on the reverse that details the event and commemorates the venue.The Games
Opening ceremony
The opening ceremony will be held on 6 February 2026 at Stadio San Siro in Milan, titled "Armonia". The ceremony will be produced by Banijay Live. Marco Balich, Creative Lead of the Opening Ceremony, explained that the word harmony derives from Ancient Greek: "It means 'bringing together' in musical terms, different elements." The opening ceremony will also feature special performances from American singer Mariah Carey and Italian artists Laura Pausini and Andrea Bocelli.Closing ceremony
The closing ceremony will be held at the Verona Arena on 22 February 2026, entitled "Beauty in Action". Along the cultural segments the ceremony will feature the closing remarks, and the formal handover to the French Alps as the host region of the 2030 Winter Olympics The first name confirmed to perform at the closing ceremony was the world-renowned ballet dancer Roberto Bolle, the principal dancer at La Scala Theatre Ballet. He and director Alfredo Accatino have previously worked together on the 2006 Winter Olympics opening ceremony.Sports
The 2026 Winter Olympics are scheduled to feature 116 medal events in 16 disciplines, an increase of seven events and one discipline over Beijing 2022. New medal events will include men's and women's dual moguls in freestyle skiing, the return of the men's and women's doubles in luge, men's and women's team alpine combined, women's large hill individual in ski jumping, and mixed relay team in skeleton. The Games will have the highest percentage of women's participation in Winter Olympic history, at 47%. Nordic combined remains the only sport in which only men compete.The alpine mixed team parallel event has been dropped. Alpine combined will switch from an individual format to two-person teams; the event had seen diminishing participation due to evolving technical and training requirements, and had been dropped from the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup circuit in 2020. Team ski jumping and Nordic combined will also switch to two-person teams, with the latter adopting a large hill / 2× course. For the first time, women will race the same distances as men in cross-country skiing.
At the 138th IOC Session on 20 July 2021, the IOC approved a proposal by the organising committee to add ski mountaineering as a debuting optional sport. It will consist of three medal events: men's sprint, women's sprint, and mixed relay. On 2 February 2024, the International Ice Hockey Federation announced that an agreement had been reached with the National Hockey League for a break in its regular season to allow the league's players to participate in the Olympics for the first time since 2014. The NHL was originally scheduled to compete in 2022 as well but opted out due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Numbers in parentheses indicate the number of medal events contested in each discipline.
Participating National Olympic Committees
The Olympic Committees of Russia and Belarus remain suspended for violating the Olympic Truce due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. As with the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, individual Russian and Belarusian athletes at the 2026 Games may compete as "Individual Neutral Athletes" without national identification. Individual neutral athletes have to be approved by each sport's international federation, and then the IOC's panel. As individual athletes, AIN is not considered a delegation during the opening ceremony or in the medal tables. International federations that are allowing Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete under the Individual Neutral Athlete banner include the International Skating Union for the various skating events and the International Ski Mountaineering Federation for the ski mountaineering events. Russian and Belarusian athletes are not allowed to compete in team events like ice hockey and curling, since the IOC has ruled that "a group of Individual Neutral Athletes cannot be considered a team". Other NOCs have had at least one male or female competitor meet the minimum alpine skiing and cross-country skiing requirements.
Benin, Guinea-Bissau and the United Arab Emirates are expected to make their Winter Olympics debuts.