2026 Winter Olympic opening ceremony live updates

An animal most people have never heard of — the stoat — is the mascot for the 2026 Winter Olympic Games. 

Drawings of Tina the stoat, the Olympic mascot, and her brother Milo, the Paralympic mascot, were designed by students of the Istituto Comprensivo of Taverna, according to the Olympics. The adorable mascots embody “the Italian spirit that inspires them.”

Tina and Milo are joined by six snowdrop flowers that the Olympics called “The Flo.”

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The 2026 Winter Olympics, officially the XXV Winter Olympic Games, will be co-hosted by Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo in northern Italy. It is the first Olympic Games to be officially co-hosted by two cities.

Milan will primarily host the ice events, while the remaining events be hosted in clusters around Cortina and the Valtellina and Fiemme valleys. Milan and Cortina are about 250 miles apart by road, nearly a five-hour drive.

Italy first hosted the Winter Olympics in 1956 in Cortina d’Ampezzo, followed by the 2006 Games in Turin. The country has also hosted the Summer Olympics once, in Rome in 1960.

The first Winter Olympics were held in 1924 in Chamonix, France

The 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics will run from Feb. 6 to Feb. 22, although a few events are being held before the official opening day. 

The Games will showcase 116 events on ice and snow, in eight sports and 16 disciplines, including alpine skiing, figure skating, ice hockey, and the debut of ski mountaineering, known as skimo.

The Paralympics will take place the following month, from March 6 to March 15.

The 2026 Winter Olympics opening ceremony will be broadcast in the U.S. on NBC. It will be streamed on Peacock and NBCOlympics.com at 2 p.m. ET. It will last about three hours.

The network says an enhanced encore presentation of the opening ceremony will be broadcast on NBC at 8 p.m. ET.

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