“Zai jian” Beijing, “buongiorno” Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo! In 2026, the Winter Olympics will return to Italy, 20 years after Turin, for an edition spread over a huge territory, for economic and environmental reasons not to build too much equipment.

“Partire non basta mai/è all’arrivo che scopri chi sei” (“Leaving is never enough/it’s on arrival that you discover who you are”): as one of the songs vying to become the official anthem, there are still a lot of unknowns on the road to the next Olympics, the first officially co-organized by two cities (February 6-22, 2026).

Milan and Cortina, to whom Beijing will pass the baton on Sunday at the closing ceremony, were preferred in 2019 to the Swedish duo Stockholm / Are.

After unprecedented destinations in Russia (Sochi in 2014) then in Asia (PyeongChang and Beijing), the Winter Olympics will return to the Old Continent, like those of summer that Paris will organize in 2024, and will above all find historic sites of skiing: Italy already hosted the event in 1956, already in Cortina, before 2006 in Turin.

Cortina, site of the women’s alpine skiing events, like Bormio, for the men’s, are also stages of the World Cup.

But the logistical challenge is no less great, knowing that the two host cities, located in two different regions, Lombardy and Veneto, are more than 400 kilometers (and some five hours) apart by road.

San Siro opening

The will of the organizers is clearly to make the most of the existing sports infrastructures to limit the economic and environmental impacts, points on which the Winter Olympics are particularly scrutinized.

The 2022 edition once again fueled the debate with, in particular, the massive use of artificial snow and facilities specially developed for alpine skiing in an arid/semi-arid region.

As a symbol of the Italian choice to bet on the existing, the opening ceremony is planned in a stadium which will then celebrate its 100 years, the venerable San Siro in Milan. Which could live its swan song, before possibly being destroyed to make way for the new “Cathedral” wanted by the two local soccer clubs, AC Milan and Inter.

The only new sites expected in 2026 were “already planned, independently of the Games themselves”, assure the organizers: the Arena PalaItalia, site of ice hockey, and the Olympic village of Milan, then converted into a university city.

The other Olympic villages of Cortina and Livigno are to be provisional.

Climate-neutral Games are also promised, with exclusive use of renewable energies during the event, carbon offsetting measures and special attention to water management.

A large Italian delegation had thus traveled to China to study “the central themes of transport, stadiums and equipment for athletes”, explains the president of the Italian Olympic Committee (Coni) Giovanni Malago.

Larger than Slovenia

Some subjects, however, already arouse tensions, such as the Cortina bobsleigh run.

The Veneto region has committed to rehabilitating the track at the historic Eugenio Monti site, used during the 1956 Games but abandoned since 2008.

The cost of the work, some 60 million euros, and the lack of a future for this equipment are however denounced by Cipra, an international collective of NGOs for the defense of the Alps, which pleads for “less expensive and more respectful alternatives of the environment”, such as relocating the events to Innsbruck-Igls, in Austria (2h30 from Cortina).

Italian skier Federica Brignone fears that the festive atmosphere of the Games will not survive the scattering of competitions over 22,000 km2, an area larger than that of neighboring Slovenia.

“From an ecological point of view it will be better, but for the Olympic spirit, it will not be great,” said the giant Olympic vice-champion to the Italian press. Before assuring, in the face of an emerging controversy, that she would obviously not miss these Games, whether she participated in them or not (she will be 35 years old).

The Italian choice “is a model to which we must get used, because it is the model which makes possible the sustainability” of the Winter Games, assured Friday in Beijing Vincenzo Novari, general manager of Milan / Cortina 2026.