2 Years until the Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympics

Two years to go until 6 March 2026 and we have already started to celebrate the Paralympics with many inclusion and accessibility-related initiatives.

Courage, determination, inspiration and equality. Two years from the Opening Ceremony of the Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympic Winter Games, scheduled for Friday 6 March 2026 at the Verona Arena, the Fondazione Milano Cortina 2026 confirms its commitment to organising increasingly inclusive Games.

The 2026 Winter Paralympics, which will be held between 6 and 15 March, will involve over 600 athletes who will compete in the six sports of the event: Para alpine skiing, Para cross-country skiing, Para snowboarding, Para biathlon, Wheelchair curling and Para ice hockey. If the numbers were to be confirmed by the results of the Paralympic qualifiers, it would be an increase of 20% compared to the last edition of the Paralympic Games held in Beijing, which included a total of 558 participants. As many as 79 medal races will be staged between Milan, Cortina and Val di Fiemme (39 for men, 35 for women and 5 mixed races) which will enchant and inspire not only the Italian communities but the entire world.

The words of Luca Pancalli

Luca Pancalli, President of the Italian Paralympic Committee and Vice President of the Fondazione Milano Cortina 2026, as part of the celebrations for the less than two years of the Paralympics declared: “The Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Paralympics will be the most beautiful ever. Exactly two years until the greatest sporting event begins, we are increasingly determined to confirm a collective commitment that must go beyond the accessibility of the competition venues with which we are dealing along with the Foundation and the IPC. The Milano Cortina 2026 Games in fact represent an opportunity and a challenge in cultural and infrastructural terms which does not only concern the Organising Committee or the athletes, but also the institutions, companies and each of us". “Over the next two years – added Pancalli – we hope that this invitation to overcome every barrier, promoting a culture that embraces equality and diversity, can be accepted by the entire country system. Only all together, through actions and commitments to support equality understood in its highest and most concrete meaning, can we promote an Italy in which the terms diversity and disability become an accelerator of growth and development".

The Adaptive Winter Sport project

An awareness-raising process that the Fondazione Milano Cortina has implemented over the years with initiatives to support inclusion, such as Adaptive Winter Sport, the four-year project of the Education program for the 2026 Games, created with the Italian Paralympic Committee (CIP), the Italian Sport Federation Ghiaccio and the Italian Paralympic Winter Sports Federation, which aims to promote the increase in sports practice among people with disabilities, through dedicated courses and campuses. 

An event to promote inclusion and equality

On the occasion of the 2 year anniversary to the start of the Paralympics, the Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games of Milano Cortina 2026, committed to ensuring respect for gender equality and diversity, organised an event in Rome, with the aim of promoting inclusion and equality within the Italian sporting scenario, to start a training course and to illustrate strategies and actions implemented by the Foundation in view of the next Games. The initiative represents an important opportunity for discussion with authoritative exponents of the world of university research and the Italian sports movement.

The Olympic and Paralympic Village is inaugurated

Furthermore, for this important anniversary, the official mascots of Milano Cortina 2026 Tina and Milo, symbol of vitality, resilience and dynamism, will visit the construction site of the Olympic and Paralympic Village tomorrow, where Coima, the company in charge of the construction of the Village for the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games will announce the completion of the roof. This structure, built according to the accessibility criteria of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), will not only host athletes during the Games, but will leave a lasting legacy, transforming itself after the Games into a modern student residence to promote accessibility and inclusion even beyond the event. A virtuous destiny that will also unite the Arena of Verona, earmarked to host the Opening Ceremony of the Paralympic Games, and the competition venues that between Milan, Cortina and Val di Fiemme will host the sports competitions from 6 to 15 March 2026.

The video of the Paralympic athletes

Finally, to celebrate this day and remind everyone of the important date with history on 6 March 2026, some Paralympic athletes were involved in the creation of a video spread on the official social channels of the Fondazione Milano Cortina 2026. Among these are the Para ice hockey athletes, directly involved in the ranks of the Organising Committee workers in the planning and implementation of the next Italian Paralympics, Martina Vozza, a promising Para alpine skiing athlete, and the double Paralympic champion and Ambassador of Milan Cortina 2026 Bebe Vio.