With just days to go until the Olympic flame is lit once more, the world’s greatest winter athletes are preparing to descend on northern Italy for what promises to be one of the most visually competitive Games in history — and potentially the most successful for Great Britain.
For British fans, there is genuine intrigue as Team GB arrives with momentum and ambition after four years of rebuilding since Beijing.
So when and where will the action unfold, how can fans in the UK watch every moment, and which athletes could define these two weeks?
Here is everything you need to know about the 2026 Winter Olympics.
Where is the 2026 Winter Olympics taking place?
It’s called Milan-Cortina for a reason, with the 2026 Winter Olympics held across cities Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo. It is the first Olympics to be officially co-hosted by multiple cities.
Milan will host multiple sports, including figure skating, ice hockey and speed skating.
Cortina d’Ampezzo, in the heart of the Alps, is around 250 miles from Milan by road and will be the home of sliding sports such as bobsled, skeleton and luge, as well as alpine skiing and curling.
The three other venue ‘clusters’ are Valtellina, Val di Fiemme and Verona.
When does it start and what is the full schedule?
The Winter Olympics officially starts on Friday, Feb. 6 with the opening ceremony at the San Siro, although some preliminary curling, ice hockey and snowboarding events actually begin from Wednesday, Feb. 4.
The opening ceremony will feature performances from world-renowned singers — in admittedly different genres — Mariah Carey and Andrea Bocelli.
There will be events every day until the closing ceremony on Sunday, Feb. 22, which is taking place at the Verona Arena.
How to watch the 2026 Winter Olympics in the UK
The full 2026 Winter Olympics will be broadcast on TNT Sport and Discovery+ in the UK for subscribers. TNT Sport say they will have over 850 hours of action from every sport, venue and medal event.
TNT Sports 2 will serve as “the primary Olympic destination,” with coverage beginning each morning at 8 a.m. GMT and live competition showed from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Discovery+ customers can watch the coverage 24/7 through a selection of live event feeds.
The BBC will also have coverage on free-to-air TV, although not as much live action as previous years.
Coverage of “all major events” will be on BBC One and BBC Two from 9am to 10pm each day.
The second live stream, Olympics Extra, will be available via BBC iPlayer and the BBC Sport website and app to show “additional” events from 8am to 11pm to show additional Winter Olympic Games.
Who are Team GB’s major medal hopes?
Team GB are aiming for their best their greatest-ever Winter Olympics medal haul, which stands at five.
UK Sport have set a goal of up to eight medals in Milan-Cortina, bolstered by genuine hopes in the skeleton through stars such as Matt Weston and Tabitha Stoecker.
There are also some promising snowboarders, plus the “new Torvil and Dean” in Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson, and the usual hopes in curling.
Five other athletes who could take Games by storm
Lindsay Vonn: At the age of 41, and boasting a ‘bionic’ knee replacement, Vonn is out of retirement and targeting an astonishing fourth Olympic medal in Cortina. Stepping up her comeback in style this season, Vonn had won two downhill World Cups by mid-January, placing her top of the overall downhill standings and sealing her place back on the US team in style.
Ilia Malinin: Nicknamed the ‘Quad God’, Malinin heads to his Olympic debut in Milan as a double defending world figure skating champion. Almost ludicrous whispers of working on a ‘quint’ – a never seen five-time rotation on a jump – may have been shelved for the time being. But Malinin, who landed a record five quads in the 2025 Grand Prix final – is still set to hit new heights.
Eileen Gu: Gu, who was born in the US but represents China, was the sensation of the 2022 Games when she won ski Big Air and halfpipe gold medals at the age of 18. A bona-fide superstar of her sport, Gu has battled injuries during the current Olympic cycle but remains a strong contender in three events – particularly halfpipe, in which she will battle Britain’s Zoe Atkin.
Arianna Fontana: Few host nation medals would be more welcomed than one for Italian short-track veteran Fontana, who heads into her sixth Games with 11 already in the bag since her debut in Turin in 2006. Bidding to become the oldest female medallist in her sport, the 35-year-old shrugged off an injury scare to win her fifth European title earlier in January.
Marco Odermatt: The 28-year-old Swiss star heads to the Olympics topping the World Cup standings in three disciplines, and a hot favourite to clinch the blue riband men’s downhill title. Odermatt finished seventh in Beijing and had to content himself with giant-slalom gold. However, the notoriously tough Stelvio course in Bormio could play right into the muscular Austrian’s hands.
What is GB’s Winter Olympics history?
Team GB claimed five medals at a Winter Olympics for the first time in Sochi in 2014 — bolstered by their first ever Olympic medal on snow through Jenny Jones — and matched that tally four years later in Pyeongchang.
In 2022, however, they only claimed one gold and one silver — both in curling.
Hopes are high again this year. Whisper it, but could Great Britain become a winter sports nation?
Information from PA was used in this report.
