Winter Olympics open in Milan and Cortina
The Games began in Italy, the first Winter Olympics ever co-hosted by two cities, with events spread across the Alps and the Dolomites.
The 2026 Winter Olympics opened in Italy on Friday, with a ceremony launching a Games that for the first time are being co-hosted by two cities, Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, and spread across venues in the Alps and the Dolomites.
Thousands of athletes from around the world gathered for the opening, which blended Italian style and spectacle with the traditional parade of nations and the lighting of the Olympic flame. Organisers had spread the events across a wide region, using existing and temporary venues in an effort to control costs and environmental impact.
The dual-city model was a departure from the usual single-host format and reflected a broader push by the Olympic movement to make the Games more sustainable and affordable after years in which the soaring cost of hosting had deterred potential bidders. Milan, Italy's fashion and business capital, anchored the indoor and ice events, while the mountain resort of Cortina hosted alpine and sliding sports.
Competition got under way across skiing, skating, hockey and the sliding sports, with established powers and emerging nations alike chasing medals. Warm temperatures and questions about snow reliability, a growing concern for winter sport in a warming climate, hovered over the preparations.
For Italy, which last hosted the Winter Games in Turin two decades earlier, the Olympics were a chance to showcase its mountains and cities to a global audience, and to test a new, more dispersed way of staging one of the world's largest sporting events.