The Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy, which open on Friday, February 6, were meant to usher in a new era of more sustainable Olympic Games, combining restraint, the reuse of existing infrastructure and a controlled environmental footprint. Yet, on the eve of the event, that goal already seems out of reach. The International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) proactive approach has not been enough to square the circle of reconciling stricter environmental constraints with staging a spectacle that aims to attract more and more sponsors and television audiences in an attempt to balance its financing.
These Winter Olympics in Italy are characterized by a format spread across sites that are sometimes hundreds of kilometers apart. The idea was to rely as much as possible on existing infrastructure in order to lower costs and reduce the impact on the environment. However, the downside of this choice, which has also been retained for the next edition in the French Alps in 2030, is that it requires spectators, athletes and accredited personnel to travel extensively between the different events. This makes no sense from an environmental standpoint.
Milan-Cortina 2026 also could not avoid the perennial controversy of the Olympic bobsleigh track. Out of misplaced nationalism, Giorgia Meloni’s government refused to hold the event in a neighboring country, opting instead to spend €120 million on building an energy-intensive facility that will host only a handful of competitions, disregarding environmental responsibility. That responsibility was further undermined by the need to guarantee snow cover on the slopes, which could only be achieved through the heavy use of costly snow cannons that are damaging to the Alpine ecosystem’s water resources.
Runaway costs
In addition to these environmental aberrations, there have been runaway costs, with expenses already tripling compared to the estimates in the original bid. Despite its rhetoric promoting restraint, the IOC demands facilities that meet ever more demanding technical standards, designed primarily for global television broadcast rather than integration with local needs. That is the central flaw of the current approach. Seeking to boost spectator numbers, increasing the number of events and making them ever more spectacular to justify soaring broadcast rights simply is not compatible with promises of environmental sustainability.
In this respect, and despite some commendable progress, these Olympics remain largely in line with previous editions. They come with their near-inevitable budget overruns and benefits for local populations that fail to address their real needs: adapting to climate change and diversifying the economy. These are ever more vital issues for mountain regions.
Unless the IOC implements a radical reform of the format, frequency and geography of the Winter Olympics, the gap between misleading talk of environmental responsibility and the pursuit of profit will persist. The French Alps 2030 organizing committee says it is ready to learn from the mistakes of Milan-Cortina 2026. But if the Olympic movement remains rooted in the 20th century, the contradictions of the Winter Games will remain unresolved.