Who are the global stars to watch at Milan-Cortina 2026?

About 2,900 athletes from more than 90 countries will compete on ice and snow at the Milan-Cortina 2026 Games.

The world’s biggest winter sports stars will descend on northern Italy from Friday 6 February, and there are sure to be thrilling, dramatic and stellar performances.

BBC Sport takes a look at some of the global stars and stories to look out for.

age: 41 Nation: US

Just five days before the women’s downhill event was scheduled to take place in Cortina, Olympic champion Lindsey Vonn announced she had torn her left anterior cruciate ligament, but she remains hopeful she will be able to compete on Sunday.

Vonn was flown to hospital in Switzerland after suffering an accident in the final World Cup race of the season, but she remains determined to compete in her fifth Olympics, despite the serious injury.

The veteran skater is no stranger to making a comeback after retiring in 2019 due to injury before undergoing partial knee replacement surgery on her right knee and returning to the sport in 2024.

The four-time World Cup winner is unsure whether she will be able to compete in the super-G and team events, but as the favorite to win slopestyle gold before suffering the injury, she is determined to get to the starting gate in what will likely be her last Olympics.

age: 30 Nation: US

Mikaela Shiffrin is the greatest alpine skier of all time and, competing in her fourth Olympics, said she wanted to “come to terms” with the Games after the disappointment in Beijing coupled with serious injuries and mental health struggles.

The five-time World Cup winner has 108 World Cup victories, securing wins in the first five slaloms of the season, which, when added to her final slalom win last season, equals her own record of six straight wins in the discipline.

But the two-time Olympic champion will be targeting a return to the podium in Cortina while her fiancé Alexander Aamodt Kjeld is also on the road back from a serious injury.

age: 24 Nation: US

American figure skater Maxim Naumov’s participation in the Milan-Cortina Games may be emotional as he is making his Olympic debut after his parents were killed in a plane crash in Washington, D.C., last year.

Naumov’s dream of joining Team USA was one of the last things he talked about with his parents before they were killed.

His parents, Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova, skated for Russia and were world pairs figure skating champions in 1994.

age: 28 Nation: France

Ski mountaineering, or skimo, is making its Olympic debut in Milan-Cortina, and while Great Britain failed to qualify an athlete in the new sport at the Games, France’s Emily Harrop is the next best thing.

With English parents, Harrop could have competed for Team GB, but she moved to the French Alps as a child, choosing to represent France.

Harrop is well placed for an Olympic medal after finishing the 2025 season with seven wins out of seven Ski Mountaineering World Cup races, winning the sprint and all-around Crystal Ball for the fourth straight season.

age: 28 Nation: Holland

Dutch skater Jutta Leerdam will compete in the 1,000m and 500m in Milan.

Leerdam, a former world sprint champion, also won a silver medal in the 1,000 meters at the 2022 Beijing Olympics.

She is also engaged to Jake Paul, the YouTuber turned boxer, who can often be seen at competitions and will cheer her on from the sidelines in Italy.

age: 19 Nation: New Zealand

Teenager Finlay Melville Ives arrives in Italy as one of the most exciting prospects on the freestyle circuit.

Ives’ parents were both snowboarding instructors, and his twin brother followed in their footsteps, but Ives chose to skateboard instead from a young age.

His breakout season came last year when he claimed his first World Cup win in Calgary, then weeks later became world halfpipe champion in Engadine, Switzerland, beating Olympic greats Alex Ferreira and Nick Gober along the way.

age: 22 Nation: China

Born and raised in California, Elaine Guo was the freestyle skater in China’s poster girl for the 2022 Beijing Olympics, where – at 18 – she won gold in the freestyle and halfpipe events, and silver in the downhill.

In addition to her Olympic victories, she is also a two-time World Champion and three-time Winter X Games Champion.

Away from the snow, Jo is one of the world’s most famous winter sports athletes, having modeled in New York, Barcelona, ​​Paris and at Milan Fashion Week while also studying quantum physics at Stanford University.

For the first time since Sochi 2014, the National Hockey League is allowing its athletes to participate in the Winter Olympics.

The NHL stars did not travel to the 2018 or 2022 games due to financial disputes and pandemic-related complications but will return to the ice this year.

In their absence, Olympic teams from Russia and Finland have won the last two men’s titles while the United States failed to win a medal in both events, but this could be a major boost to their hopes of getting back on the podium.

age: 25 Nation: US

Eight years after winning gold as a 17-year-old in Pyeongchang, American snowboarder Chloe Kim is headed to a three-peat in Italy.

She successfully defended her title in Beijing four years ago, but her preparations for Milan-Cortina were disrupted after she dislocated her shoulder at the beginning of the year.

She said in an Instagram update that she is “ready to go” to the Games, where she aims to become the first woman to win three consecutive Olympic gold medals in the halfpipe.

age: 35 Nation: Germany

Legendary German bobsleigh pilot Francesco Friedrich arrives in Italy hoping to become the first man to achieve the triple double – winning two and four men’s golds for a third consecutive Olympic Games.

He is a 16-time world champion in the two-man and four-man events, while he has been on the World Cup podium more than 100 times, claiming his 50th doubles victory earlier this year.

Germany tends to dominate the Olympic bobsled events, and the question is whether anyone can stop them from making history.

age: 35 Nation: Italy

Competing in her sixth Olympic Games, Ariana Fontana is an 11-time Winter Olympic medalist, having won medals in her previous five appearances – including as a 15-year-old in Turin.

Twenty years later, the short track skater also aims to compete in long track speed skating.

Two-time Olympic champion Fontana will also be one of the Italian flag bearers at the opening ceremony at the San Siro.

age: 25 Nation: Brazil

Norwegian-born skier Lukas Pinheiro Braathen could make history in Italy by winning the first Winter Olympics medal for a South American country after switching allegiance to competing for his mother’s native Brazil.

The slalom and giant slalom expert retired in 2023 after competing for Norway but returned in 2025 to represent Brazil and became the first Brazilian to finish on the podium at the World Cup last year before claiming his country’s first victory of the season to add to Norway’s five wins.

Charismatic and thoughtful, Brathen says people don’t believe him when he tells them he represents Brazil in alpine skiing.

age: 18 Nation: Independent neutral athlete

Russian skater Adelia Petrosyan is one of about 20 Russian or Belarusian athletes competing under a neutral flag in Italy.

The teenager did not compete internationally at senior level until the Olympic qualifiers due to the ban on Russian athletes but is a real medal contender after winning the qualifiers.

She is coached by the controversial Eteri Tutberidze, who coached Kamila Valeeva during the 2022 Beijing Olympics. Valeeva was banned for four years for doping after she helped Russia win team gold before it was later revealed that she had failed a drug test before the start of the Games.

age: 21 Nation: US

Ilya Malinin is the only skater to successfully land the Quadruple Axel, the most difficult jump in skating, in competition, earning him the nickname “Quadruple God”.

The American, born to Olympic skaters Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skornyakov, is the favorite for the men’s singles title in Italy with previous routines including seven quads and a backflip.

The world champion will compete in his first Olympics after being controversially left out of the US team in Beijing.