The Milano-Cortina 2026 medals are here!
by Jill Jaracz
Today, the Milano-Cortina 2026 Organizing Committee released the medals for next year’s Winter Olympics and Paralympics. Check them out:
The 2026 Winter Olympic medals – do you see the perpetual motion? (photo: Milano-Cortina 2026)
The Organizing Committee worked with Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Italy’s mint on the project. They call it a team effort–and the result kind of looks like a team effort.
The team went Italian Avant-Garde with this design, hoping to capture the Italian spirit, as well as a concept of bringing two halves together and sealing them with the Olympic (or Paralympic) values. There’s some slight ridges on the two halves, which emphasize that division and also give the medal some extra texture
The two halves concept is neat because it captures this sense of two host cities – you’ve got your Milano half and your Cortina half. What’s hard to discern in these photos is that the two halves have different appearances–one half is granular, the other is a mirrored finish. The Olympic logo in the center is the key element to bring the two sides together. The reverse has the same two sides and features the Games logo and the event.
For the Paralympics, it’s the same concept but with a few tactile elements to help visually impaired athletes read their medals:
The sides of the Milano-Cortina 2026 Paralympic medals feature an etched I, II or III to differentiate gold, silver and bronze.
(photo: Fondazione Milano Cortina 2026)
The reverse of the Milano-Cortina 2026 Paralympic medals include the logo, event, and the event in Braille. (photo: Fondazione Milano Cortina 2026)
Milano-Cortina 2026 is continuing the ribbon pattern of blue for Olympics and red for Paralympics that we saw for Paris 2024 and Tokyo 2020.
After the last few Games, these seem a little underwhelming. Paris 2024 had pieces of the Eiffel Tower. Beijing 2022 used a traditional jade concentric circle pattern. Tokyo 2020 used recycled metals. They were all very cool, and this seems a little plain, a little too clean.
Like I said, it probably looks much more interesting in person–we’ll have to hope we can get a close-up soon.
That said, the Milano-Cortina 2026 design follows in the footsteps of former Italian Winter Games host cities in terms of being uniquely Italian. Let’s look back at the medals from previous Italian winter editions.
Cortina d’Ampezzo 1956 sets the standard
Italy first played host to an Olympics in 1956 when the Winter Olympic Games took place at at Cortina d’Ampezzo. Cortina had been named as the host for the Winter Olympics in 1944, but those were cancelled due to World War II).
Cortina 1956’s medals were designed by Costantino Affer, an Italian sculptor and engraver who specialized in medal art, and minted by A.E. Lorioli Fratrelli of Milan. Along with the Cortina 1956 medal, Affer also designed a number of Presidential medals, including a 1961 John F. Kennedy Inauguration medal , and a number of commemorative space medals, mainly for Apollo missions.
Affer’s medal design featured a woman’s face with windswept hair–perhaps blown that way by the flaming torch in the foreground. Around the edge it says in Italian the seventh Winter Olympics and features five interlocked rings–but they act as a crown to our medal heroine versus the three-on-two Olympic rings that we know today. This keeps in line with the medal style of the day, which featured a lot of statues in relief.
Costantino Affer’s Cortina 1956 medal (photo: International Olympic Committee)
The reverse has a stylish snowflake hovering over Mt. Pomagagnon, a mountain in the Dolmomites that rises above Cortina. This design is framed by the Olympic motto of the time, “Citius, Altius, Fortius” (faster, higher, stronger) and “Cortina 1956.”
Italians are not ones to skimp on design details, and the medal presentation is a spectacular detail. Each type of medal came in a different-colored leather presentation box: Green boxes for gold, red for silver, and white for bronze. That meant (a) it was easy to grab the right medals you needed for that particular medal ceremony, (b) the boxes together looked like the Italian flag, and (c) I’m dying to know what a medals presentation looked like in 1956–what were the medal presenters wearing?? That may be a detail lost to time.
Can you beat this design detail?! (photo: Cortina 1956 official report)
Torino 2006 Olympic medals break the mold (and CD players)
It took another 50 years for the Winter Olympics to cycle back to Italy (a Summer Games was in Rome in 1960). Torino hosted the Winter Olympics in 2006, and those medals were statement pieces:
The Torino 2006 Winter Olympic medals: A piazza…..or a CD. (photo: IOC)
First off, a design like this had never been done before. In general, most Olympic medals are round. Paris 1900 had rectangular medals, but that was the second Olympics so we didn’t really have a set concept for what an Olympic medal should look like. Rome 1960 added a funky laurel wreath chain around its round medal, which really set it apart from its predecessors, but that was the only shape variation until Sapporo 1972, which had a free-form roundish square look to it.
After Sapporo, you’d occasionally see a shape variation, but they were definitely in the minority. I have to applaud Sarajevo 1984 for appealing to both camps with its circle within the square(ish) look. Then we had medal designs that played with form and materials–think Albertville 1992’s medals with Lalique glass.
Then Torino came out with this design, which honored the concept of the piazza, or city square, which was a theme of these Games, and to the design team, headed by Dario Quatrini, the hole was supposed to be the piazza, where the heart of the medal was. It also incorporates the design elements of these Games.
Others thought it looked like a CD–and it might have been as big as one. These medals may still be the largest medals to date, clocking in at 105mm in diameter (in comparison, the diameter of the Cortina 1956 medals was 60mm.
Another first was that the ribbon was tied directly around the center of the medal instead of threaded through the top, which gives it an extra flair.
Torino 2006 Paralympic medals are one-of-a-kind
In 2006, Torino also hosted the country’s first Winter Paralympics, but these medals were vastly different from their Olympic counterparts. Today, medals for each Games are variations on a theme, but back then, the two Games were still seen as more separate events (in 2001, the IOC and International Paralympic Committee had signed an agreement to have one host city host both Games, but that didn’t take effect until the 2008 Games).
The Torino 2006 Paralympic medals also break tradition. While they aren’t the CDs of the Olympics (and indeed, they’re 30mm smaller in diameter), they are outstanding in their own right. And really, they’re more spectacular than a lot of Olympic medals.
Are these not stunning?? (photo: International Paralympic Committee)
This medal is the first to use the Paralympic Agitos logo, which is on the reverse, with the event etched around the edge. The front has the sport pictogram, with the name of the Games etched around the edge. The one nod to the Olympic medal is that this ribbon is also tied around the top of the medal, rather than being threaded through a slot.
Additional information from: Olympic Medals: A Reference Guide by Jim Greensfelder and Jim Lally. 2nd edition, 2007.