The countdown is on for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy.
The torch relay is already underway and a few of the prime athletes are already making headlines. There are 16 sports activities in all, together with some by no means seen earlier than, and 116 gold medals are ready to be awarded.
A pair takes a photograph in entrance of the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics countdown clock, in Cortina D’Ampezzo, Friday, Nov. 21, 2025. (AP Picture/Andrew Medichini)
This would be the most spread-out Winter Video games in historical past: The 2 main competitors websites are the town of Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, the upscale winter resort within the Dolomites that’s greater than 250 miles away by street. Athletes additionally will compete in three different mountain clusters moreover Cortina, whereas the closing ceremony shall be in Verona, 100 miles east of Milan.
Prepare for all the occasions with this information of issues to know!
Key dates to know
Competitors runs Feb. 4-22. Listed below are a few of the huge days to mark in your calendar:
Feb. 4: Competitors begins (curling).
FILE -Italy’s Stefania Constantini, directs her teammate throughout the blended doubles curling match in opposition to Sweden, on the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 6, 2022, in Beijing. (AP Picture/Nariman El-Mofty, File)
Feb. 6: Opening ceremony.
Feb. 7: First gold medal occasions.
Feb. 8: Gold medal, ladies’s Alpine snowboarding downhill.
Feb. 13: Gold medal, males’s determine skating.
Feb. 18: Gold medal, ladies’s Alpine snowboarding slalom.
Feb. 19: Gold medal, ladies’s determine skating. Gold medal sport, ladies’s ice hockey. First gold medals in ski mountaineering, a brand new Olympic sport.
Feb. 22: Gold medal sport, males’s ice hockey. Closing ceremony.
FILE – A skier trains on the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics venue within the Dolomite Mountains in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, on Jan. 17, 2025. (AP Picture/Alessandro Trovati, File)
watch
Dozens of nations will stream or air every day’s occasions, with some delaying broadcasts till primetime relying on the time zone.
That would be the case within the U.S., the place Japanese time is six hours behind Milan and Cortina. NBC will carry showcase occasions at evening whereas streaming sports activities on Peacock.
Prime storylines
Athletes to observe: Two of probably the most embellished Alpine skiers in historical past, 41-year-old Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin, opened the World Cup season in dominant kind, elevating American hopes of a golden run in Cortina. Eileen Gu is again in freestyle snowboarding, as is Chloe Kim in snowboarding. NHL gamers are again on Olympic ice for the primary time since 2014 so look ahead to the likes of Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid.
Venues: All eyes are on the hockey arenas in Milan, which had been nonetheless underneath building in December; the principle rink shall be about 3 ft shorter than NHL and PWHL gamers are used to. And the athletes’ village in Cortina is a set of greater than 350 cell houses.
Russian athletes: Some sports activities federations are deciding whether or not to let Russians compete as impartial athletes however solely after they’re cleared by an unbiased evaluation course of to make sure that they haven’t publicly supported the warfare in Ukraine and will not be affiliated with Russia’s navy or different forces.
What’s new: Ski mountaineering will make its Olympic debut whereas skeleton has added a blended workforce occasion, luge has added ladies’s doubles and huge hill ski leaping added ladies’s and males’s tremendous workforce occasions.
