Athlete's signatures are seeon on a board inside the Olympic Village ahead of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan on February 3, 2026. (Photo: AFP)

The Milan-Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games promises to be an experiment which will present logistical challenges for organizers.

Instead of being based in one venue, the 2026 Winter Olympics are a multi-hub event with the two main competition sites in the city of Milan and the Dolomites winter resort of Cortina d'Ampezzo, while the closing ceremony will be held in Verona.

Cortina d'Ampezzo is over 400 kilometers away from Milan - a drive of around almost five hours, with a similar journey time by train, while Verona is 160 kilometers to the east of Milan, a two-hour drive.

There are other mountain clusters around Cortina d'Ampezzo, with Val di Fiemme to host the cross-country skiing and Nordic combined events, while Anterselva (Antholz) is the venue for biathlon, and freestyle skiing and snowboarding competitions will take place in Livigno and Bormio.

This means it will be the most spread-out Winter Olympics in history, with 16 sports staged across more than 22,000 square kilometers, with 116 gold medals to be awarded.

It also means there is no single Olympic Park or Olympic Village for competitors, with the athletes staying close to where their events take place, which will reduce travel times but also mean a complex logistics operation.

The snow park in Livigno, Italy, which will host all Snowboard and Freestyle Skiing events as part of the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, January 12, 2026. (Photo: VCG)

The Games are also based on the use of existing venues wherever possible, with the ski slopes in the Dolomites already familiar to competitors as they are used to annual World Cup events, while temporary venues are going to be used, especially for ice sports.

The same 'reuse and recycle' philosophy is also visible in the policy for accommodation for spectators and media, who will be staying in existing hotels and short-term rental accommodation across the region. It will help to spread economic benefits beyond just Milan, but also needs good transport connections from outlying towns.

Milan-Cortina 2026 will also be the most gender-balanced Winter Olympics in history - with female participation in 47 percent of events.

Eight events will make their Winter Olympic debuts at Milan-Cortina, including ski mountaineering, which features men's sprint, women's sprint and mixed relay divisions. Other new events are the men's and women's dual moguls in freestyle skiing, women's doubles in luge, mixed team in skeleton, women's large hill in ski jumping, and Alpine skiing team combined.

Some big names to look out for include Mikaela Shiffrin, the most decorated female Alpine skier in history, and Lindsey Vonn, who has come out of retirement for one last tilt for glory, while two-time gold medalist Chloe Kim is looking for a hat-trick in the women's snowboard halfpipe. China's freestyle skier Gu Ailing is also set to be one of the faces of the Games.