Multi-sport event in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy
The 2026 Winter Olympics (), officially the XXV Olympic Winter 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 Northern and Northeast Italy.
Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo were awarded the 2026 Winter Olympics at the 134th IOC Session on 24 June 2019, beating a joint bid by the Swedish cities of Stockholm and Åre. They will be the first Olympic Games to officially be co-hosted by multiple 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 be the fourth Olympic Games hosted by Italy, and the third Winter Olympics since the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin; Cortina d'Ampezzo had previously hosted the 1956 Winter Olympics.
The Games are expected to feature the debut of ski mountaineering as an event.
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.
Speed skating venue selection.
During the bid 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 very expensive, potentially breaking the budget. So instead, the Committee deliberated over three choices: building an ice rink in the pavilions of Fiera Milano (in a possibility to be permanent or temporary), 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, hosted a variety of events such as exhibitions, fairs and conferences. The venue was also 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 latter withdrawn. One of the spokespersons to reject this proposol 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.
Concerns about sliding sports venue.
During the bidding process, the joint Committee proposed to restore the Eugenio Monti olympic track in Cortina, to be relaunched as a federal centre also for sledding and skeleton. The minimum cost of restoring the closed track was initially estimated at €14 million, while in the official Milan-Cortina bid dossier the cost indicated was €100 million (similar budget needed to build the Cesana Pariol track used at the 2006 Winter Olympics). After initially forecasting an expenditure of €40-50 million, the Veneto Region allocated funding up to €85 million to build the new Olympic venues. An annual expenditure of €400,000 was also planned for the management of the facility, which would be open four months a year, to be settled through the establishment of €8 million fund.
Due to the rising cost of construction materials, the Veneto region president Luca Zaia turned public in February 2023 that the restoring cost for the Eugenio Monti track could be upwards of €120 million. Calling for tenders to award the work, no company came forward with a bid by the 31 July 2023 deadline; even after that, no company interested in carrying out the work could be found, both for economic reasons and because of the difficulty to complete all works before the start of the Olympics. Due to critical issues, costs and prohibitive times for the total renovation of Cortina track, the mayor of Innsbruck, Austria made a proposal for the use of the Igls Olympic Sliding Centre in Innsbruck. On 16 October 2023 the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI) announced that the track will not be rebuilt to host the 2026 Olympic Winter Games, and the sliding events could be held outside of Italy. However, the current Italian government wanted the sliding events to remain in Italy, so they studied the possibility to revamp the Cesana Pariol track which hosted the events at the 2006 Winter Olympics, which has been dormant since 2011. Since then, several construction companies have submitted bids to study a potential reconstruction of the Eugenio Monti track. A bid was won to build a new sliding track instead of rebuilding the Eugenio Monti track, which will be demolished.
Despite concerns about the new track not being ready on time, it was confirmed in September 2024 that the new Eugenio Monti track was on schedule, and that homologation of the track is expected by March 2025. The Mt. Van Hoevenberg Olympic Bobsled Run in Lake Placid, New York, US, has been officially designated the back-up venue if the new track is not ready in time.
Olympic torch.
The Olympic torch will be presented in a simultaneous event held in Milan in Italy and Osaka in Japan. It will be revealed at the Italian pavilion at Expo 2025 as a way of connecting the two twin cities, as Milan previously hosted Expo 2015.
Venues.
The Games will primarily utilize existing venues across Northern 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 indoor arena designed by David Chipperfield is being constructed in Milan's Santa Giulia district, which will host ice hockey. San Siro will host the opening ceremony, while the historic Verona Arena will host the closing 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, men's and women's doubles in luge (replacing the single mixed event), 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%.
The alpine mixed team parallel event has been dropped, while alpine combined will now be contested by teams of two; individual alpine combined had been dropped by the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup in 2020, and had record-low participation at the 2022 Games. Team ski jumping and Nordic combined will also switch to pairs formats. For the first time at the Olympics, women will race the same distances in cross-country skiing as men.
At the 138th IOC Session on 20 July 2021, the IOC approved a proposal by the Milano Cortina organising committee to add ski mountaineering as an optional sport. It will consist of three medal events: men's sprint, women's sprint, and mixed relay. In February 2024, the IIHF announced an agreement with the National Hockey League (NHL) to allow its players to participate in the Olympic men's hockey tournament for the first time since 2014.
"Numbers in parentheses indicate the number of medal events contested in each discipline."
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Participating National Olympic Committees.
The following 66 National Olympic Committees have qualified athletes. Seven qualifiers and the hosts, Italy, were confirmed as qualified by the IIHF into the ice hockey tournament with Russia provisionally holding another spot. However, its participation is uncertain due to the aftermath of the invasion of Ukraine starting in 2022. Russian athletes were not permitted to enter team events at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. However, the matter of the terms of the eligibility of Russian athletes at the 2024 Summer Olympics was reported by the Associated Press as allowing 15 Russian 'neutrals' to fully participate and apparently allowing for the possibility for Kamila Valieva and others to participate as 'neutrals' at the 2026 Winter Olympics. The final decision on Russia in ice hockey is expected in early 2025. Other NOCs have had at least one male or female competitor meet the minimum alpine skiing requirements. The United Arab Emirates is expected to make its Winter Olympics debut.
Calendar.
 ;section begin="Calendar"/ ;The first version of the schedule was released in March 2024. Competition will begin two days before the opening ceremony on 4 February, and end on 22 February 2026.
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Marketing.
Emblem.
For the first time, the emblem of an Olympic Games was determined via a public vote. On 6 March 2021 during the Sanremo Music Festival finals, two candidate designs titled "Dado" and "Futura" were unveiled by former Italian Olympic gold medallists Federica Pellegrini and Alberto Tomba. They were both designed by Landor Associates. On 30 March 2021, "Futura" was announced as the winning emblem. The emblem consists of a stylized "26" written in a single stroke, representing the impact of "small gestures", and "sport, solidarity, and sustainability".
Mascot.
An online vote closing on 28 February 2023 was held among a list of candidates to select the two mascots of the event. The winning candidates, designed by the students of a school in Taverna and inspired by stoats, were presented during the second night of the Sanremo Music Festival 2024 on 7 February 2024. Their names were revealed to be Tina and Milo (derived from the names of the host cities), and are portrayed as sister and brother. The choice of stoats has been explained as being due to these animals' embodiment of "the contemporary Italian spirit" of curiosity, ability to change according to the seasons, and capacity of adaptation to challenging habitats. The two main mascots are additionally accompanied by six snowdrop flowers, called "The Flo".
Characteristics.
Milo, a brown stoat, and Tina, a white stoat, are brother and sister "born in the mountains of Italy", who "decided to move to the city". Tina, the main Olympic mascot, symbolizes art, music, and the transformative force of beauty. Milo, the Paralympic mascot, was born without a leg but uses his tail to help him walk, representing ingenuity, willpower, and creativity.
Theme song.
During the Sanremo Music Festival 2022 finals, the two final candidates for the official anthem of the event were presented, with a poll opening afterward. On 7 March 2022, "Fino all'alba" ("Until the dawn")—composed by the youth music group La Cittadina of the San Pietro Martire in Seveso, and performed during Sanremo by Arisa — was announced as the winner.
Broadcasting rights.
In Italy, domestic pay-TV rights are owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, with free-to-air coverage and digital rights owned by RAI under a sub-license agreement with the European Broadcasting Union. On 16 January 2023, the IOC announced that it had renewed its European broadcast rights agreement with Warner Bros. Discovery Sports to last from 2026 through to 2032. The contract covers pay television and streaming rights to the Summer, Winter, and Youth Olympics on Eurosport and Discovery+ in 49 European territories. Unlike the previous contract where corporate precursor Discovery, Inc. was responsible for sub-licensing them to broadcasters in each country, free-to-air rights packages were concurrently awarded to the EBU and its members to cover at least 100 hours of each Winter Olympics. EBU member RAI then signed a sub-licensing deal for Italian free-to-air TV and digital rights.
References.
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