The curtain will rise at 8 pm on Friday, February 6, at Milan’s San Siro stadium. The world will witness the opening ceremony of the 2026 Winter Olympics, which will run through February 22 in the capital of Lombardy and the resort of Cortina d’Ampezzo, in the heart of the Dolomites. The event will be staged by creative director Marco Balich. The festivities that mark the start of the Olympics are always highly anticipated, but this time they have taken on a different significance for Italy. The previous Games were held in the summer of 2024 by their French neighbors.
France is often cast as a foil. This stems from the age-old rivalry between the two countries, whether in gastronomy โ the addition of Italian cuisine to UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage list in December 2025 was seen as a well-deserved slap in the face to France โ or in sports. Even today, it is not uncommon to hear, on the Italian side of the Alps, indignant comments about French footballer Zinรฉdine Zidane’s infamous headbutt to Marco Materazzi during the 2006 World Cup final in Berlin, sometimes even from young people who were not yet born at the time.
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