The Paralympic Flame was unified on Tuesday in Cortina d’Ampezzo, where the five flames created during festivals in Turin, Milan, Bolzano, Trento and Trieste came together. The ceremony marked the beginning of the final stage of the relay ahead of Friday’s Opening Ceremony at the Arena di Verona. A total of 501 torchbearers are taking part in the route, which will carry the flame through Venice and Padua before arriving at the Roman amphitheatre where the cauldron will be lit.
The Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympic Winter Games will take place from 6 to 15 March and will bring together more than 600 athletes from around 50 countries. Over ten days, 79 medal events will be contested across six disciplines: Para alpine skiing, Para biathlon, Para cross-country skiing, Para ice hockey, Para snowboard and wheelchair curling. This guide outlines the key aspects of the competition, the venues and the international broadcast coverage.
Venues and settings of the Paralympic Winter Games
The Opening Ceremony will take place at the Arena di Verona, a Roman amphitheatre built in the first century that is now used for major cultural and sporting events. The Closing Ceremony will be held at the Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium, one of the historic venues of the Italian Paralympic programme. The Games are spread across several locations in northern Italy, with competitions staged in Milan, Cortina d’Ampezzo and the Val di Fiemme valley.
The Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena will host all Para ice hockey matches, from the group stage through to the medal games. The venue, with a capacity of around 16,000 spectators, forms part of the redevelopment of Milan’s Santa Giulia district. In Cortina d’Ampezzo, the Para alpine skiing events will take place at the Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre, one of the best-known slopes on the international circuit, while the Cortina Para Snowboard Park will stage the snowboard competitions. Para biathlon and Para cross-country skiing events will be held at the Tesero Cross-Country Skiing Stadium in Val di Fiemme, a regular host of Nordic skiing world championships.
Six sports and 79 medals at stake
The sports programme combines speed, precision and endurance. In Para biathlon, athletes alternate cross-country skiing with shooting from a distance of 10 metres, aiming at targets measuring just 13 or 21 millimetres depending on the class. In Para ice hockey, players compete on sledges equipped with two blades that allow them to glide across the ice while controlling the puck with adapted sticks. Wheelchair curling, known as ‘the roaring game’, is played without sweeping and requires high precision when delivering granite stones weighing close to 20 kilograms.
The Para ice hockey tournament features eight national teams — Italy, Canada, China, Czechia, Germany, Japan, Slovakia and the United States — divided into two groups before the semifinals. In Para alpine skiing, athletes compete in sitting, standing and vision-impaired categories, using a factoring system that allows performances across different classes to be compared. The programme also includes snowboard events such as snowboard cross and banked slalom, while curling will introduce mixed doubles to the Paralympic schedule for the first time.
Extensive television coverage for the Paralympic Winter Games
Television coverage will be delivered by 29 broadcasters from the European Broadcasting Union -EBU-, providing free-to-air broadcasts in 27 European territories through networks including ORF, France Télévisions, ARD/ZDF, NOS, NRK, SVT and TRT. In total, at least 900 hours of coverage are expected across television and digital platforms. The streaming service Eurovision Sport will provide live and on-demand coverage of all six sports, while Warner Bros. Discovery will broadcast daily highlights across its sports channels.
The Opening Ceremony also takes place amid a complex diplomatic context. Eight countries — Czechia, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Netherlands and Ukraine — have announced they will not take part in the opening parade in protest at the participation of Russian athletes competing under their national flag. The Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympic Winter Games will feature more than 600 athletes and award 79 medals across six winter Paralympic sports.
