Emblem of the 2026 Winter Olympics | |
Host city | Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy |
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Motto | Sognando insieme[citation needed] (English: Dreaming together) |
Events | 116 in 8 sports |
Opening | 6 February 2026 |
Closing | 22 February 2026 |
Stadium | San Siro (Opening ceremony) Verona Arena (Closing ceremony) |
Winter Summer
2026 Winter Paralympics |
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2026 Winter Olympics |
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The 2026 Winter Olympics, officially the XXV Olympic Winter Games (Italian: XXV Giochi olimpici invernali) and also known as Milano Cortina 2026 (Ladin: Milano-Anpezo 2026 or Milano-Ampëz 2026), is an upcoming international multi-sport event scheduled to take place from 6 to 22 February 2026. The event will have the Italian cities of Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo as main host cities. The joint bid from the two cities beat another joint bid from Swedish cities Stockholm–Åre by 47–34 votes to be elected host cities at the 134th Session of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 24 June 2019.[1][2][3]
This will be the fourth Olympic Games hosted in Italy, the second for Cortina d'Ampezzo (previously hosted the 1956 Winter Olympics), and the first hosted in Milan. It will be the first Olympic Games featuring multiple host cities in an official form and will be the first Winter Olympics since Sarajevo 1984 at which the opening and closing ceremonies will be held in different venues. In addition to the two main host cities, another nine around the Italian center-north region will host the events.[a] It will mark the 20th anniversary of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, the most recent Olympics in Italy, and the 70th anniversary of the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo, the first Olympics held in Italy. It will be also the last of the two consecutive Olympics to be held in Europe with France hosting the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
Main article: Bids for the 2026 Winter Olympics |
Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo were elected 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 in this host city election under the rules of the Olympic Charter.
City | Nation | Votes |
---|---|---|
Milan–Cortina d'Ampezzo | ![]() |
47 |
Stockholm–Åre | ![]() |
34 |
One abstention[4] |
Numbers in parentheses indicate the number of medal events contested in each discipline.
On 18 June 2021, the International Olympic Committee issued a proposal for a new winter sport, ski mountaineering, for the 2026 Winter Olympics. The proposal was approved during the IOC's session in Tokyo on 20 July.[5]
On 24 June 2022, the IOC announced the final version of the program for this edition. Present in the last two editions of the Games, the mixed team event of alpine skiing was dropped from the program. This removal was done for logistical reasons, as men and women will be competing at different resorts that are very far apart. The IOC together with the FIS decided to provisionally place the combined event in both sexes in the same sport, given the low technical level and the high number of accidents during the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. However, along with the three ski mountaineering events, five new events have been added to the Olympic program in four sports that were already on the program. In this way, a total of 114 events in eight sports were confirmed.[6]
The official emblem for the games was decided through a global online vote that opened on 6 March 2021. The two candidate emblems were unveiled at the Sanremo Music Festival 2021 by former Italian Olympic gold medallists Federica Pellegrini and Alberto Tomba and are nicknamed "Dado" and "Futura".[7] They were both designed by Landor Associates.[8] It is reportedly the first time that the emblem of an Olympic Games was decided by the public.
The vote closed on 25 March 2021, with the winning emblem, the "Futura" emblem, announced on 30 March 2021.[9][10]
The official anthem of the 2026 Winter Olympics and the 2026 Winter Paralympics was announced in March 2022.[11]
In the United States, these Games will once again be broadcast by NBCUniversal properties, as part of its US$7.75 billion contract[50] to air the Olympics through 2032.[51] The 2026 edition of the Super Bowl—championship game of the National Football League (NFL) and historically the most-watched television broadcast in the United States annually—is tentatively scheduled to be broadcast during the Winter Olympics for a second consecutive time following the Super Bowl LVI in 2022 (and the third time that NBC has held the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics on the same year after Super Bowl LII in 2018) airing during the 2022 Winter Olympics. On 18 March 2021, the NFL renewed its rights to its U.S. broadcast partners through 2033, awarding NBC the Super Bowl during the Winter Olympic years of 2026, 2030, and 2034 (if it still has the Olympic Rights then).[52][53] Holding rights to the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics will prevent competition for viewership and advertising sales, and also allow NBC to create synergies and complementary advertising packages for the events.[54][55] While there is an established practice of airing premieres or special episodes of entertainment programs after the Super Bowl to take advantage of its large audience, NBC may decide to air its Day 3 programming daytime in the morning prior to the Super Bowl and its primetime block after the game, as in 2022.