There are less than 100 days to go before the 2026 Olympic Winter Games begin in Milano-Cortina, and like all others since the Paris Olympics a century ago, this Olympics will begin with an Opening Ceremony that sets the tone for the event.
The olympic mascots Tina (left) and Milo pose on the podiums of the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Games during a press conference marking 100 days to go before the start of the games, in Milan on October 29, 2025. (Photo by PIERO CRUCIATTI / AFP via Getty Images)
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Olympic Opening Ceremonies are often cultural touchstones, but beyond that they also tend to soothe any last-minute panic that threatens to overwhelm an impending Games. The Rio 2016 curtain-raiser held in the iconic Maracana Stadium may be the best recent example. Relatively austere as far as productions go, it nonetheless conveyed warmth and abundance, calming fears of the Zika virus and having the event in a city that didn’t quite seem ready for it. Somewhere between an artistic depiction of Portuguese settlers arriving in Brazil and Gisele Bundchen strolling the world’s longest catwalk everyone calmed down, and the Games came off without much of a hitch.
Supermodel Gisele Bundchen walks as The Girl From Ipanema during the Bossa segment during the Opening Ceremony of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games at Maracana Stadium on August 5, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
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No such organizational fracas surrounds Milano-Cortina, but it’s still fitting that Games organizers have chosen “Armonia” (Harmony) as the theme around which the February 6 Opening Ceremony at Milano San Siro Stadium will be built. As acknowledged by several candidates in the IOC Presidential race earlier this year, this is a time of change and uncertainty for the global community, and a calming message of unity seems just the thing. “Harmony is not just a theme: it is our promise to the world,” proclaimed Milano-Cortina Organizing Committee President Giovanni Malago.
Olympic Opening Ceremonies tend to remain shrouded in secrecy until zero hour, but for Milano-Cortina a few details have been divulged. Here’s what we know so far.
- Harmony is a central theme. It’s “a universal concept that becomes a visual and emotional narrative,” organizers said in a press release announcing the theme earlier this month, and elaborated by explaining that “Harmony will be the common thread of a narrative that intertwines fantasy and beauty.” If that seems a bit slim on details, the ambiguity is the point — it fires the imagination and fills the head with all kinds of marvelous visions, even if what ultimately happens will be something entirely different.
- The ceremony is in the hands of a veteran producer. The choice of Marco Balich and his company Balich Wonder Studio is a safe one — Balich has been responsible for more than a dozen Opening Ceremony extravaganzas, as well as big events for FIFA and the European Football Championships.
- The Opening Ceremony will be “diffuse.” As in, held in multiple locations, with athletes being able to participate in the traditional parade of nations whether they’re in the mountains or in the city. The goal of the “simultaneous ceremonies and athlete parades” in Predazzo, Livigno and Cortina d’Ampezzo is “involving as many of the real players in the Olympic and Paralympic Games as possible,” explained ceremony director Maria Laura Iascone. Between Paris and Milano-Cortina, the concept of having everyone parade through a stadium may be dead.
- Leonardo da Vinci will have a role. Arguably the greatest of Italy’s Renaissance men will be present somehow, and he may not be the only one. Organizers promise “Leonardo and the great inventors, Italian design and taste, music and elegance. A choral tale that celebrates Italian talent in all its forms: from artists to athletes, to the young people building the future.”
- Matilda De Angelis will be involved. The Italian actress, who is best known for the Netflix series The Law According to Lidia Poet and the HBO miniseries The Undoing, has been unveiled as the first big talent “among the many who will star in the show.”
- There will be a Giorgio Armani tribute. The legendary Milanese fashion designer who passed away in September designed the kits of Italian Olympic teams at eight editions of the Games, including the one they’ll wear in Milano-Cortina. “I couldn’t imagine a more inspiring collaborative project, one that features the city that gave me so much and sport,” Armani said earlier this year. Inspired by the peaks of the Italian Alps, he based the clothes on the color white. In his words: “Among the values of sport, respect is perhaps one of the highest, and I captured it in an idea of simplicity, clarity, and purity.”
- There will be two Olympic cauldrons. This is a first. One will be in Milano in the Arco della Pace, and the second will be in the mountains at Piazza Dibona in the center of Cortina d’Ampezzo.
- Many of the torchbearers have been announced. In addition to grand names in Italian sport, those carrying the torch as it approaches San Siro Stadium will include Dario Pivirotto, an Italian born in 1936 who carried the torch before Cortina d’Ampezzo in 1956 and again in 2006 when the Winter Games were held in Torino.
- Expect Italy to take center stage. Opening Ceremonies so often showcase the nation hosting the Olympics, and Italy has more UNESCO World Heritage sites than any other country in the world. How could we expect the nation that gave us Fellini, Michelangelo, pizza, the Vespa, and the espresso, and the Trevi Fountain (among so many other things) not to lean into it a bit?