The 2026 Winter Olympics opening and closing ceremonies: what you need to know

Organizers also plan to use the opening ceremony as a time to highlight Italian historical figures such as Leonardo da Vinci and Christopher Columbus. There will also be a tribute to fashion designer Giorgio Armani. “We will highlight Italian talent, and what we do best: creating beauty and excitement,” says Yasconi.

What to expect at the closing ceremony

The Winter Games will conclude on February 22 with a ceremony held at the Arena di Verona. The Verona Arena, the oldest sports stadium in the world, has been chosen as a legacy for the Milan Cortina Olympics.

The organizing committee stressed the importance of the Verona Arena in Milan Cortina’s bid for the Olympic Games. This year’s Games will be the first time that the closing ceremony will be held in a different location than the opening ceremony.

The closing ceremony will continue the narrative that began with the opening ceremony, celebrating Italy and its excellence. “We want to show once again how Italy knows how to transform aesthetics and talent into poetry,” says Yasconi.

Organizers say the closing ceremony, titled “Beauty in Motion,” was intended to evoke the “Italian spirit,” not only of the athletes and the venues where the Games will be held, but also of the Verona stadium itself, which despite being centuries old is still capable of hosting major events on an international scale.

Great attention will be paid to the technological architecture of the theatre, which will show the Verona Arena “as you have never seen it before,” says Alfredo Accatino, President of Filmmaster and Creative Director of the closing ceremony.

More than 800 people, including musicians, dancers, technicians and volunteers, will participate in the closing ceremony, which will end with the traditional handover before the 2030 Winter Olympics, which will be held in the French Alps.

Olympic torch design

By tradition, in addition to the athletes and the stadiums, the Olympic flame will be at the center of this year’s Winter Games, symbolically carrying the flame from Greece, where it all began, to all parts of the world.

For the 2026 Winter Games, the torch is designed to have a minimal visual impact. It is sleek and metallic and has a narrow, slightly curved body at the top, a shape meant to draw attention to the flame itself

Olympic torch relay November 25 began with the traditional lighting in Olympia, Greece. From there she headed to Athens and then to Italy in early December. In total, the torch’s journey will take 63 days, 60 stops, a distance of approximately 7,500 miles, touching all 110 Italian provinces.

On January 26, the torch relay arrived in Cortina, exactly 70 years after the opening ceremony of the 1956 Olympic Games in Italy. On February 6, the flame will arrive at the San Siro Stadium for the opening ceremony.

More than 10,000 Olympic torchbearers

In total, there will be more than 10,000 torchbearers who will accompany the Olympic flame throughout Italy. The bulk of them will be volunteers, but among them will also be several outstanding Italian athletes from the Olympic and Paralympic Games, as well as champions from previous Summer and Winter Games, along with a few celebrities, Like Jackie Chan and Hot competition The stars Connor Storey and Hudson Williams.

This story originally appeared on Wired Italy. It has been translated from Italian.