The Italian cities of Milan and Cortina will host the '26 Games, returning the Olympics to northern Italy for the second time in two decades. The joint Italian bid beat out its only competitor, a Swedish bid put together by Stockholm and the mountain resort of Are. Today's vote in Lausanne, Switzerland, could be one of the last traditional head-to-head Olympic races ever, as the organization reforms its bid process to account for declining interest. Milan-Cortina won with a 47-34 vote; forty-two votes were needed for a majority of the IOC members present. Sweden had the benefit of being a major winter sports powerhouse that had never before hosted the Winter Games despite bidding seven previous times -- Stockholm did host the 1912 Summer Games -- while Northern Italy hosted the '06 Turin Games. During each bids’ final presentations today, Swedish IOC member Gunilla Lindberg claimed the sustainability high ground, challenging the body to live up to its own promises. The IOC recently passed a package of reforms designed to make the Olympics less dependent on costly, new developments and making sure facilities are used after the Games leave. The Stockholm-Are bid accomplished that, she said, by using facilities around the country and in neighboring Latvia instead of building new venues. "This is your chance to prove that the New Norm is not just talk,” Lindberg said. However, Sweden was challenged by the lack of a national government for many months during the campaign, and Stockholm city government never signed the host city contracts usually required.
EARLY DETAILS OF ITALY'S PLAN: The ’26 Games will be in venues spread throughout the Lombardo and Veneto regions. Thirteen existing venues will be used, but two others will require major renovations. An Olympic village and a 15,000-seat hockey venue will be built from scratch. This was the third consecutive Olympics bid race to fall between just two cities, following the race for the '24 Games between Paris and L.A. that ended in a joint award, and the race for the '22 Games, won narrowly by Beijing over Almaty, Kazakhstan. Industry insiders give the IOC credit for avoiding even further attrition in this race -- both the Swedish and Italian bids appeared to be in serious jeopardy at various points in the last 18 months. With little leverage, the IOC gave itself new flexibility in enforcing certain terms of the bid race that were once ironclad, such as the timing of governmental guarantees.
