VERONA, Italy — The Milan Cortina Olympics ended Sunday as the twin flames in co-host cities Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo were extinguished during a closing ceremony inside the ancient Verona Arena, roughly mid-distance between the far-flung mountain, valley and city venues that made these the most spread-out Winter Games ever.
In declaring the 2026 competition over, International Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry told local organizers they “delivered a new kind of winter games, and you set a new, very high standard for the future.”
The next Winter Games will be held in neighboring France, which received the Olympic flag in the official handover earlier in the ceremony. Following the same spread-out model, the 2030 Winter Games will stage events in the Alps and Nice, on the Mediterranean Sea, while speed skating will be held either in Italy or the Netherlands.
At the Milan Cortina Games, a total of 116 medal events were held in eight Olympic sports across 16 disciplines, including the debut of ski mountaineering this year, over the course of 17 days of competition. With the final events wrapping up just hours before the ceremony, the 50-kilometer mass start men’s and women’s cross country medals were awarded by Coventry inside Verona Arena.
Host Italy posted its highest Winter Olympics tally ever with 30 medals: 10 gold, six silver and 14 bronze, crushing the previous record of 20 set at the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics in Norway.