When are the next Paralympics? What to know about the Paralympics 2026 in Italy

The Opening Ceremony on 6 March at the Arena di Verona will launch the paralympics 2026, which run from 6–15 March and mark the 50th anniversary of the Paralympic Winter Games. The schedule and athlete delegation size make this edition the largest Winter Paralympics to date.

Paralympics 2026: Opening ceremony and schedule

The Games open on 6 March with a ceremony staged at the Arena di Verona, a Roman amphitheatre in northern Italy. Competition runs through 15 March, with medal events spread across the nine-day window. Published listings show opening-week competition including sitting and standing biathlon sprints, alpine downhill and Super-G events, snowboard cross finals, and wheelchair curling mixed-doubles and mixed-team matches. Several sled hockey qualifying matches are scheduled early in the program.

Athlete delegation and event program

The paralympics 2026 will bring together as many as 665 Para athletes representing 50 National Paralympic Committees to contest 79 medal events across six sports: Para alpine skiing, Para biathlon, Para cross-country, Para ice hockey, Para snowboard and wheelchair curling. That roster of sports and events frames the medal table and the competition calendar for the nine-day Games.

From Örnsköldsvik 1976 to Milano Cortina: evolution

The current Winter Games stand in sharp contrast to the inaugural Örnsköldsvik 1976 edition. The first Games featured 198 athletes from 16 countries competing in two sports—Para alpine and Para cross-country skiing—with competition classification for athletes with amputations and athletes with vision impairment. Early organisers recalled learning on the job while adapting able-bodied competition know-how to Para sport.

Notable early moments cited in the historical record include Birgitta Sund winning three gold medals in cross-country at the first Games and West Germany leading that tournament’s medals table with 10 gold, 12 silver and six bronze medals. The second Winter Games in Geilo, Norway, added ice sledge speed skating as a medal event, attracting 26 athletes from five countries; Norway dominated that addition in the medals, and an individual athlete claimed all three golds in the new discipline plus two cross-country golds.

Subsequent editions expanded the field and events: Innsbruck hosted back-to-back in the 1980s, downhill was added to Para alpine skiing, and by the early 1990s the Games had grown to several hundred athletes and multiple sports. Tignes Albertville staged 79 medal events across three sports for 365 athletes from 24 delegations, while Lillehammer later featured 133 medal events across five sports and introduced Para ice hockey to the Winter Paralympic program. Individual performances that reshaped the Games’ narrative include athletes who earned multiple medals in a single edition, reflecting both elite performance and the deepening competitive field.

What to watch and near-term implications

With 79 medal events and competition concentrated into a nine-day span, early medal opportunities will come in biathlon sprints, alpine downhill and snowboard cross, while team sports such as Para ice hockey and wheelchair curling are scheduled to shape the latter half of the program. The concentration of events and the large athlete delegation underline the anniversary nature of this edition: the programme both commemorates five decades of Winter Paralympic competition and presents a compact, busy schedule for athletes and delegations.

Operational and competitive indicators to monitor as the Games begin include start lists and matchups for sled hockey qualifying rounds and the mixed-team wheelchair curling matches, plus the pace of alpine racing on downhill and Super-G days. If weather or scheduling adjustments occur, those competition days are likely to influence medal distribution and the visible narratives emerging from the Milano Cortina competition.

Key takeaways

• The Milano Cortina Winter Games run 6–15 March, opening at the Arena di Verona on 6 March.
• The programme includes 79 medal events across six sports and up to 665 athletes from 50 committees.
• The 2026 edition marks the 50th anniversary of the Winter Paralympics and reflects substantial growth since 1976.