Everything you need to know ahead of the 14th Winter Paralympics, held in Milano Cortina, Italy for the second time.
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Where is the 2026 Winter Paralympics?
The Games will be held across three clusters of Milan, Cortina D’Ampezzo and Val di Fiemme.
Italy last hosted the Winter Paralympics in Torino 2006 where 474 athletes competed, representing 38 countries, and wheelchair curling made its debut.
When is the 2026 Winter Paralympics?
The 2026 Winter Paralympics officially runs from Friday, March 6 to Sunday, March 15.
However, the wheelchair curling commences on March 4 with the start of the mixed competition, due to its round-robin format, where Great Britain will play Estonia on the first day.
When and where is the Opening Ceremony?
The opening ceremony takes place in Verona at the first century Roman amphitheatre Arena di Verona on March 6 – the same place the 2026 Winter Olympics closing ceremony was held.
The closing ceremony will be held at the Cortina Curling Stadium on March 15, which also hosted the opening ceremony of the 1956 Olympic Winter Games.
Where will events takes place?
Para alpine skiing – Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre
Para biathlon – Tesero Cross-Country Skiing Stadium
Para cross-country skiing – Tesero Cross-Country Skiing Stadium
Para ice hockey – Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena
Para snowboard – Cortina Para Snowboard Park
Wheelchair curling – Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium
Who are Team GB’s medal hopefuls?
Menna Fitzpatrick, Great Britain’s most decorated Winter Paralympian, will compete in alpine skiing, alongside her guide Katie Guest, just three months after suffering a serious knee injury.
She has won six medals, with her sole gold medal coming in Pyeongchang 2018 in the slalom.
Also competing in the alpine skiing is Sam Cozens and his guide Dominic Allen, who placed third in the giant slalom twice on the European circuit in 2025/2026.
Cozens is visually impaired as he was born with a condition called nystagmus which causes his eyes to shake side to side and gives him limited peripheral vision.
Davy Zyw will be making history as the first man with Motor Neurone Disease to compete in the Winter Paralympics as a snowboarder.
In the 2026 European Cup, he placed second in the banked slalom, third in the snowboard and third overall – putting him in strong contention for a podium position at Milano Cortina.
Team GB athlete list in full for Winter Olympics
Para alpine skiing:
Menna Fitzpatrick and Katie Guest (guide)
Sam Cozens and Adam Hall (guide)
Fred Warburton and James Hannan (guide)
Dom Allen
Hester Poole and Ali Hall (guide)
Neil Simpson, Andrew Simpson (guide) and Rob Poth (guide)
Para snowboard:
Nina Sparks
Matt Hamilton
Davy Zyw
Ollie Hill
James Barnes-Miller
Para Nordic:
Scott Meenagh
Wheelchair curling mixed doubles:
Jo Butterfield
Jason Kean
Wheelchair curling mixed team:
Hugh Nibloe
Karen Aspey
Austin McKenzie
Stewart Pimblett
Graeme Stewart
World stars to watch at the Winter Olympics
Oksana Masters, born in Ukraine with radiation-induced birth defects, is the most decorated American Winter Paralympian with 14 medals to go along with five Summer Paralympic medals.
In Para biathlon and Para cross-country skiing, Masters became the first American to win seven medals – in seven events – at a single Paralympics in Beijing.
Fellow American Brenna Huckaby, whose right leg was amputated at 14, will try to win her fifth and sixth medals in Para snowboarding. Huckaby has three golds and a bronze.
Oksana Masters during the women’s middle distance sitting event of para cross country skiing at the 2022 Winter Paralympics
Italian Giacomo Bertagnolli, visually impaired, will have a chance to add to his four Paralympic gold medals and 10 world titles while competing at home in all five Para alpine skiing events.
Norway’s Jesper Pedersen, born with spina bifida, won four of the five medal events in Para alpine skiing in Beijing and is set to fight for medals again in Italy.
Wang Haitao won gold in wheelchair curling in PyeongChang in 2018 and Beijing in 2022, becoming only the second captain to win back-to-back Paralympic titles after Canada’s Jim Armstrong. Wang will try to become the first three-time Paralympic champion in the sport.
Ukrainian Oleksandra Kononova, who has a stunted right arm, won three gold medals in Para biathlon and Para cross-country skiing as a 19-year-old in Vancouver in 2010. She’s won two more Paralympic titles and over a dozen world titles since then, despite injuries.
Will there be any Russian athletes?
The Russian flag hasn’t been flown at the Paralympics since the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, while the national anthem has not been heard at any Olympics or Paralympics since the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Games.
Milano Cortina could be the first time in four years the anthem is played at any major global sporting event after Russian and Belarussian athletes were ruled eligible to compete at the Winter Paralympics in September 2025.
Russian athletes were initially banned because of a state-sponsored doping program, and the sanctions continued after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with Belarus also being excluded since 2022 due to its relations with Russia.
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Sky Sports’ Sports News Correspondent Geraint Hughes explains why there were no Russian or Belarusian at the 2026 Winter Olympics but will be at the Paralympics.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, described the decision as “awful”.
“It’s a dirty decision, absolutely, not respectable and not European from the point of values,” he said on Piers Morgan Uncensored.
“I think this is not a just decision, so we will react.”
Ukraine’s sports minister Matvii Bidnyi has said the nation will not be present at the opening ceremony.
“We will not take part in any other official Paralympic events,” Bidnyi said in a social media post after the IPC announced the return of the Russian flag and anthem on February 18.
Russia have been allocated a total of six spots, with two in Para alpine skiing (one male, one female), two in Para cross-country skiing (one male, one female), and two in Para snowboard (both male).
Belarus have been allocated four slots total, with all in cross-country skiing (one male and three female).
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: skynews.com
