MILAN — The Winter Olympics came home to the mountains on Friday night, and did so in a way no Games has attempted before. Milano Cortina 2026 opened with a ceremony spread across four sites, two Olympic cauldrons lit simultaneously in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, and a main show at San Siro — the great football stadium staging its last global event before partial demolition.
The format matches the Games themselves. These are the most geographically dispersed Olympics ever held, stretching some 400 kilometres from Milan’s ice rinks to the Alpine resorts of Cortina, Livigno, Bormio and Val di Fiemme. Organisers say the model uses mostly existing venues and will become the blueprint for a more sustainable Olympic movement; critics note it will test athletes’ legs and spectators’ wallets alike.
Friday’s ceremony mixed opera house and pop concert: Andrea Bocelli and Mariah Carey performed, the Italian flag entered to a duet between Cecilia Bartoli and Lang Lang, and the parade of athletes was split between the four clusters so that no competitor had to travel hours for a few minutes of marching.
The Games also mark a changing of the guard at the International Olympic Committee, with Kirsty Coventry presiding over her first Olympics as president — the first woman and the first African to hold the office.
Over the next sixteen days, around 2,900 athletes will compete in 116 events, including the Olympic debut of ski mountaineering. Italy, host for the third time after Cortina 1956 and Turin 2006, is promising what its politicians like to call the most Italian of Games.
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