Milan-Cortina 2026 Olympics: the Design Behind the Scenes of the Games
The Olympics are never just about competition. They are a complex design ecosystem where materials, technology, form, storytelling, and culture converge to generate performance, wonder, and collective identity.
For us, as a Milan-based design studio, speaking about the Olimpiadi Invernali di Milano Cortina 2026 is almost a natural act. Not only for professional reasons, but because this edition comes to life in our own territories, between Milan and the Dolomites, transforming the landscape we inhabit into an international platform for experimentation.
More than any other event, the Games synthesize what design represents—or should represent—at its highest expression. Function becomes performance, performance translates into elegance, and elegance emerges from the coherent integration of form, technology, and culture.
Made in Italy on the Podium
These Games are not an isolated episode, but the visible peak of a solid and strategic industrial supply chain. According to a report by Mediobanca Research Area, the global winter sports market in 2025 is estimated at around €13.5 billion, with projected growth of 6% in 2026. The sector is primarily driven by outdoor activities—particularly skiing—with Europe remaining the leading market in terms of resorts and participants.
In this landscape, Italy holds a leading position. It is the world’s fifth-largest exporter of sporting goods overall, and ranks third globally in winter sports, with an 11% share of the global market—behind only Austria and China. In practical terms, one out of every ten winter sports products exported worldwide is Italian.
Kappa, Scarpa, Colmar, Vibram and Tecnica are just a few of the brands representing Made in Italy worldwide, once again standing out in international supply chains thanks to quality, technological innovation, and highly specialized manufacturing.
Italian leadership is concentrated in key segments: global dominance in ski boots, with the Asolo–Montebelluna district recognized as an international hub; strong presence among leading snowboard, ice skate, and high-end equipment manufacturers; and advanced expertise in infrastructure, from ski lifts to artificial snowmaking systems.
In this context, Milan-Cortina 2026 becomes a true international showcase for an industry that had already reached the podium long before stepping onto the snow.
Design as Competitive Advantage
If there is one discipline that embodies technological evolution applied to sport, it is bobsleigh—often referred to as the “Formula 1 of ice.”
On tracks exceeding 1.5 km, at speeds over 145 km/h and accelerations above 5G, bobsleigh is a concentration of extreme engineering. Originally wooden, then steel, sleds are now dominated by carbon fiber for its rigidity-to-weight ratio.
Yet the most significant design leap in recent years concerns not only the sled itself, but the initial push phase—the first 30–50 meters that determine the entire descent. Here, customized spiked shoes developed in collaboration with BMW for the German federation come into play: 3D-printed plates generated through parametric software and tailored to each athlete’s biomechanics.
No longer a standard model with 250 identical spikes, but geometries calibrated to running style, push position, and foot structure. Plasma nitriding treatment—borrowed from the automotive world—increases spike hardness and durability, transforming the shoe into a high-performance engineered device.
Meanwhile, Team USA has invested in dynamic carbon-fiber insoles developed by VKTRY Gear: active devices capable of returning energy during foot flexion. Not simple cushioning supports, but plates that store and release elastic energy during the push phase, increasing stiffness and energy return. In a sport where a hundredth of a second can determine the podium, insole design becomes as strategic as sled aerodynamics.
Digitalization completes the picture: cloud platforms and AI systems analyze crew combinations, trajectories, and micro-impacts during sled entry, simulating configurations before physical testing. The Data Coach system, also used on the new Cortina track dedicated to Eugenio Monti, maps every curve through sensors installed on the sled, transforming the descent into a dynamic dataset.
If bobsleigh represents the most evident hi-tech dimension, curling demonstrates how even a seemingly traditional sport is now fertile ground for sophisticated innovation. Olympic stones, made from Ailsa Craig granite and produced by Kays Curling, result from extremely precise grinding and polishing processes.
The real evolution, however, lies in interaction tools: ultra-light carbon fiber brooms, such as the LightSpeed line by BalancePlus, designed to maximize energy transfer and reduce fatigue. With over 85,000 possible configurations across handles, foams, and covers, customization reaches ergonomic precision.
Shoes, featuring differentiated slider/gripper systems, are true biomechanical devices. Teflon or steel soles ensure controlled glide, while reinforced grips guarantee stability and identical weight distribution on both feet.
Ski mountaineering (skimo), making its Olympic debut in 2026, introduces an opposite philosophy: maximum lightness and rapid transition. Skis, bindings, and boots are engineered to eliminate every unnecessary gram, enabling lightning-fast transitions between ascent, boot-packing, and descent. Synthetic anti-slip skins and free-heel bindings transform equipment into a modular system capable of adapting within seconds to three distinct functional modes.
Finally, apparel continues to evolve—seemingly beyond possibility—toward performance enhancement. The Air Milano jacket developed by Nike for Team USA brings Air technology, originally created for footwear cushioning, into outerwear. A double-layer membrane contains air inflated via an integrated micro-fan, allowing thermal insulation to be adjusted in about 20 seconds. Alongside ultra-high-performance materials, even air itself becomes part of the design vocabulary: light, insulating, and adaptable.
Distributed Olympics: The Evolution of the Spectator Experience
If equipment tells the story of performance evolution, the spectator experience of Milan-Cortina 2026 reflects the transformation of the entire Olympic system. Milan-Cortina 2026 represents the first true model of “distributed” Olympics: multiple locations, territories, and identities coexisting within a single narrative, infrastructural, and digital architecture.
From a design perspective, this means creating continuity within fragmentation. Competitions are spread across a vast and articulated territory—from Lombardy to Veneto, Trento, and Bolzano. Media centers are decentralized, logistics distributed, and spectators are both physically present and remotely connected. Everything requires a meticulously designed ecosystem in which wayfinding, visual identity, temporary infrastructures, and digital platforms speak the same language, delivering a unified experience despite systemic complexity.
The real revolution, however, takes place in media consumption. According to Olympic Broadcasting Services, Milan-Cortina 2026 is among the most technologically advanced editions ever, with innovations designed primarily for spectators.
For the first time in a structured and systemic way at the Winter Games, FPV (First-Person View) drones follow athletes along descents, curves, and straights, broadcasting real-time footage from previously unreachable angles. This is not merely technical progress, but a perceptual paradigm shift: the audience no longer observes the race from the outside, but is pulled directly into the trajectory, reducing the distance between the athlete’s body and the spectator’s gaze.
These innovations are complemented by 360-degree replays generated by synchronized camera networks, featuring advanced freeze-frames, enhanced slow motion, and stroboscopic motion analysis. Jumps, rotations, and trajectories become readable from multiple simultaneous viewpoints, transforming performance into an almost scientific object. Spectacle and technical transparency merge to increase understanding—and therefore engagement.
Disciplines such as curling also benefit from advanced tracking systems that visualize stone trajectories, speeds, and rotations in real time through intuitive graphic overlays and rail-mounted or ice-level cameras. Abstract data becomes comprehensible imagery, making a sport that can seem cryptic at first glance far more accessible.
In a 2026 context, artificial intelligence inevitably becomes part of the experience. Olympic GPT, the Games’ AI assistant, interacts with users on the official website, answers questions about events, provides real-time results, explains rules, and generates automatic summaries optimized for mobile consumption. At the same time, AI analyzes video feeds to create searchable clips, suggest keywords, identify key fan moments, and adapt content offerings in real time based on audience interests.
For us designers, the lesson is clear: design no longer concerns only the object or the space, but the integrated direction of experience. The distributed Olympics of 2026 demonstrate that when territory, technology, and storytelling are conceived as a coherent system, the result is not simply a sporting event, but a new global standard of engagement.
In this perspective, design becomes a strategic instrument: it coordinates complexity, translates data into perception, guides the gaze, and shapes the experience of both spectators and athletes.
