The Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games organising committee has officially proposed the inclusion of ski mountaineering to the event’s programme.
In a statement, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said ski mountaineering will be put forward as an additional sport for 2026 and the IOC Executive Board has forwarded this proposal to the next IOC Session in Tokyo in July.
The proposal to include ski mountaineering consists of:
- 5 new medal events: 2 men’s events (Sprint/Individual), 2 women’s events (Sprint/Individual), 1 mixed-gender relay event
- 48 athlete quotas (24 men/24women) to be found within the overall framework of the 2,900 quota
These five proposed events will follow the principles set for all other events in the programme, including the implementation of a full venue-sharing model with no additional or standalone Games venue for ski mountaineering.
The IOC Executive Board highlighted a number of key features of ski mountaineering that support its potential inclusion to the programme of Milano Cortina 2026:
- The same five ski mountaineering events contributed to the success of the Winter Youth Olympic Games Lausanne 2020
- Ski Mountaineering is a particularly popular sport in Italy, with deep historical and sporting roots across the alpine regions. Italy is also one of the world’s leading nations with several international successes in major competitions over the past ten years
- Ski mountaineering is a fast-growing winter sport among amateur/weekend practitioners. Europe is the continent where ski mountaineering has the greatest development but over recent years more and more participants, at both professional and amateur level, have been detected all over the world