Four sites, two cauldrons, and a levitating set of Olympic rings raining fire.
The opening ceremony for the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Games on Friday stretched from a city stadium to mountainside villages to kick off an Olympics already unprecedented in size and reach. From inside the storied San Siro stadium in Milan, the spectacle included the visual aspects – acrobats! dancers! pyrotechnics! – that millions of fans around the world have come to expect from the international pep rally that officially launches the Games.
From the dances to the music to the fashion, the show was all Italy. Dancers draped in white and gold togas chasséd between marble busts reminiscent of iconic works. Paparazzi trailed a fashion model with a giant conductor’s wand, directing life-size bobbleheads of Italian composers. Giant tubes of paint spilled out sheets of silk in primary colors that were mixed and melded by dancers dressed in all the colors of a box of crayons. Even the tension in a choreographed dance, meant to represent the distance between urban life and the natural world, dissolved into an embrace beneath the golden Olympic rings.
Why We Wrote This
Opening ceremonies offer an Olympic host country an opportunity to showcase its culture. In Milan’s San Siro stadium, depictions of music, art, literature, and architecture centered on an overall theme of harmony.
A message was wrapped in the ceremony’s dance and song, its theme: “Armonia,” or harmony. And as the athletes entered the stadium, the unique layers of what can only be the Olympic experience were shown through harmoniously, if you will, as a combination of personal glory, national teamwork, and international camaraderie.
“Over the next two weeks, you’re going to give us something truly special,” said International Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry, herself a medal-winning Olympic swimmer for Zimbabwe, when addressing the athletes. “You’ll show us what it means to be human. To dream. To overcome. To respect one another. To care for each other. You’ll show us that strength isn’t just about winning – it’s about courage, empathy, and heart.”
But in her speech at San Siro, Ms. Coventry only addressed a fraction of this year’s athletes in person. The athletes’ procession at the stadium began on large video screens. No athletes waved their flag at the Milan venue until six countries in, with the arrival of Armenia. In fact, more than half of the countries competing in the Games had no athletes represented at San Siro. In their place, an emotionless, solitary woman dressed in a metallic puffer jacket carried the country’s name emblazoned on a block of ice.
And despite the emphasis on harmony, geopolitical strains lurked beneath the dance routines and singing by famous artists such as Mariah Carey and Andrea Bocelli.
Boos erupted for Israel’s delegation, and then again, louder, when U.S. Vice President JD Vance and the second lady were projected on the jumbotron cheerfully waving tiny American flags. Roars of support for Ukraine, and the conspicuous absence of Russia, were signs of the times that even sports fans cannot overlook.
Outside the arena before the ceremony, an American man wearing a T-shirt that read “I’m sorry about our president,” posed for photographs with other spectators. And yet, at a nearby trolley stop, a couple from Michigan laughed with an Italian couple.
“That’s what makes the Olympics so special, is that it’s like the whole world coming together to watch sports,” says Ellie Kam, a U.S. pairs skater, in an interview with the Monitor after her performance on Friday. “It’s something that’s not political; it doesn’t have any agenda. It’s just athleticism and people trying to do what they love and share it with everybody else.”
Events already underway
Though the opening ceremony marks the official start of the competition, events have jumped the cauldron lighting by 48 hours, with hockey, curling, figure skating, and snowboarding already underway. And with the kickoff team event in figure skating on Friday, in which 10 countries will compete against one another with teams made up of one single woman skater, one single male skater, one pair team, and one ice dancing pair, the classic Olympic layers of camaraderie and competition were on display. In many individual sports, including figure skating, athletes compete for themselves.
Abbie Parr/AP
And while the ceremony was beautiful, as jaw-dropping use of fire and Italian silk can be, so was the opening women’s ice hockey game on Thursday between the two lowest-ranked countries: France, which was making its Olympic hockey debut, and Italy, which played in the spot reserved for the host country. Diehard hockey fans might not have tuned in for this preliminary round game, but there was still glory and joy. When the Italian goalie threw out her leg to block an incoming puck like the striking claw of a crab, the stadium roared. Young families wore stripes of green, white, and red face paint and cheered on cue for every shot on goal – even if not everyone in the crowd fully understood the rules.
Mattia Ferraro says that, before Thursday, the only time his young daughters, Viola and Rosa, had seen hockey was in the animated movie “Inside Out.” But the Milan-based family wanted to cheer on their country at an Olympic event, and this preliminary-round game between the two lowest-ranked women’s teams was the most affordable. “I know it’s just the U.S. and Canada mostly for women’s hockey,” says Mr. Ferraro, waiting in line for the merchandise store with his wife and daughters. “But this is a good chance to see something different.”
That day, Italy had its first-ever victory in Olympic ice hockey, beating France 4-1 – more goals than the national team scored during the entire Turin 2006 Olympic Games, the last time Italy had a women’s team compete, when they lost all five games they played in by a total score of 48-3.
Italian players remarked to the media how they had never before played a game in front of such a big crowd. “Knowing we have a country behind us cheering us on is beyond special,” said Italian player Kristin Della Rovere. “I don’t have the words to describe that, but we feel and hear every single one of them, so it’s special.”
One wonders, then, what the Jamaican athlete walking down the snowy path alone during the opening ceremony in Livigno might have felt if he could have heard the cheers that erupted in San Siro when his image filled the large screens above the levitating golden rings.