The Tofana Ski Area, Cortina d’Ampezzo (ph. Lu Mikhaylova).

At the time of writing, with four months to go before the Games open, we are reasonably confident that all the necessary sports facilities will be ready on time.

But of course, not everything has gone smoothly: if we compare the 2019 dossier, the promises have not been entirely kept. In fact, most of the infrastructure works that would have facilitated access to the venues – which are quite far apart – will not be completed on time: they will be a legacy that we will benefit from in the years to come.

Not all of the planned facilities could be built or adapted; for some of them, features not strictly functional to the running of the competitions had to be reduced; overall, the costs were significantly higher than expected. One way or another, Italy will still be able to offer a sporting event that complies with the rules.

With a joint bid from two different geographical areas, different locations have been planned for the opening and closing ceremonies. The Olympic Games will be opened at the Milan San Siro Olympic Stadium, while the closing ceremony is scheduled to take place at the Verona Olympic Arena.

The Arena di Verona is also set to host the opening of the Paralympic Games, which will close at the Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium.

Milan and Lombardy

There are three venues that will host Olympic or Paralympic competitions in and around the city (Milan, Rho, Assago).

Firstly, the Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena, a large sports arena designed by British star architect David Chipperfield with Arup on behalf of Cts Eventim: a privately funded project that will subsequently be able to host various types of shows and events. It is an elliptical arena with three rings and a modular interior for events of all kinds, with a capacity of 16,000 seats, designed for future use after it has hosted ice hockey during the Olympics.

In Rho, the Milano Ice Park, for some hockey games and speed skating, will be a temporary facility. After Baselga di Piné decided not to implement the existing oval, an agreement was reached with Fiera Milano, which will set up temporary structures in four pavilions of the Rho Exhibition Center in the coming months.

The third facility is the Ice Skating Arena: this is the Forum di Assago, a multi-purpose facility that already hosted the World Figure Skating Championships in 2018 and will be the venue for short track and figure skating competitions with completely renovated technological facilities.

Bormio and Livigno are the Lombardy mountain resorts that will mainly participate with ski facilities, which will host the alpine skiing, ski mountaineering, and freestyle skiing competitions.

Cortina d’Ampezzo and Trentino-Alto Adige

The controversial Cortina Sliding Center, presented in the bid dossier as a redevelopment of the historic bobsleigh track dating back to the 1956 Olympics, has become a completely new facility, for which there have been difficulties in tendering due to much higher than expected costs. By foregoing many ancillary facilities, it was nevertheless possible to test the bobsleigh track within the time frame required by the IOC. Curling will also be played in Cortina, inside the Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium, the historic ice stadium that has been expanded with a number of new structures for the occasion.

The Alpine skiing and snowboarding competitions will take place on the slopes of the Tofane mountains around Cortina.

Away from Cortina, three locations in Trentino-Alto Adige are part of the 2026 Games venues: Anterselva, in the province of Bolzano, Predazzo and Tesero in the province of Trento.

The Anterselva Biathlon Arena will host the biathlon competitions. The facility already hosts the Biathlon World Championships and the IBU Biathlon World Cup.

Predazzo is home to the Predazzo Ski Jumping Stadium, the venue for ski jumping and Nordic combined. The facility has been upgraded with the demolition and reconstruction of two ski jumps, bringing the other four existing jumps up to new standards and technologies.

Finally, in Lago di Tesero, there is the Tesero Cross-Country Skiing Stadium, a large sports facility which will host cross-country skiing and Nordic combined events.