The countdown to Milan-Cortina 2026 is dominated by a question that almost no one would have asked in the days of the 1956 Olympics: will it be cold enough? According to an analysis by Climate Central, warmer weather is redrawing the boundaries of reliable snow and hardy ice, forcing the Winter Games to become increasingly reliant on technology and compressing the safety and fairness margins of outdoor racing. Even in the heart of the Italian Alps, where the altitude is expected to offer guarantees, more than 2.3 million cubic meters of artificial snow will be needed to set up slopes and tracks.
Seventy years of heating
Seventy years of warming have changed the climate of Cortina d’Ampezzo. Average February temperatures have risen 3.6 °C since the 1950s, bringing the Olympic month closer to the thaw threshold: from an average of about -7.1 °C in past decades to values around -2.7 °C in recent years. Cold weather is less frequent: days with subzero temperatures have decreased from 214 per year in the decade following the ’56 Games to 173 between 2016 and 2025. Forty-one fewer days of frost is not a detail for disciplines that require compact, homogeneous surfaces to ensure safety and a level playing field among athletes. In Milan, site of the ice competitions, February warmed up by 3.2 °C.
Natural snow, moreover, is more scarce. Studies cited in the analysis indicate that the average snow depth in Cortina in February decreased by about 15 centimeters between 1971 and 2019, a sign of warming in the Alps. This is not an isolated signal: all 19 Winter Games cities since 1950 have experienced a 2.7°C increase in average February temperatures. It is the trajectory of a changing winter, with risks and uncertainties for the competitions.
Research from 2024 quantified how rising temperatures shrink the number of cities eligible to host the Games. Evaluating 93 past or potential venues based on two key criteria-the likelihood of daily lows at or below zero and the probability of having at least 30 centimeters of snow on the ground-87 out of 93 locations are now found to be reliable. But in the average warming scenario with global emission reduction commitments, only 52 locations would remain reliable by the 2050s.
The sports that chose indoor competitions
Sports are struggling to adapt. Those once outdoors have gradually fallen back indoors: between the 1970s and 1980s, field hockey, figure skating, speed skating, and curling found stability in refrigerated arenas that the weather no longer guaranteed. But for downhill skiing, snowboarding, cross-country, combined, jumping and bobsledding, the game remains outdoors and is complicated. 94 percent of elite athletes and coaches surveyed in a 2022 study fear adverse effects of climate change on their sport. Snowboarders chase snow, forced to shift training in search of colder, more reliable slopes. Ski seasons are getting shorter: in the United States, the average duration has shrunk by up to a week compared to 1960-1979. In bobsledding, even when the slopes are outdoors, constant refrigeration becomes essential to maintain ice; but the operation generates frost, which slows down the track, raising questions of fairness between those who start earlier and those who finish later.
Artificial snow is an integral part of the Winter Olympic ecosystem. It is valuable for ensuring uniform slopes and consistency, but it does not solve everything: it requires dry, cold air conditions to produce and maintain, as well as significant energy and water investments. At best, it standardizes; at worst, if the thermometer stays too high, it does not take root and leaves slopes vulnerable to rain and slush turning, with knock-on effects on safety.
