That’s it, the Games are launched! This Friday evening, at around 8 p.m., the opening ceremony of the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympic Games began in four simultaneous locations, including the legendary San Siro stadium in Milan. After a show lasting more than 3h30, the 2026 Olympics were officially launched for a little over two weeks of competition.
This historic opening ceremony – for the first time for the Winter Olympics, it was organized simultaneously in several places – was beautiful and successful. We could talk about the cameo from nine-time MotoGP world champion Valentino Rossi, the colorful tribute to the Venice Carnival or the humorous and self-deprecating performance about “Italians who talk with their hands”, but we had to make a choice! Here are our five highlights, in chronological order, from this beautiful evening.
Among the big names expected in Milan this Friday evening was obviously the American superstar Mariah Carey. Dressed in a sublime dress by Italian designer Fausto Puglisi, she first sang the world-famous song “Nel Blu, dipinto di Blu” by Domenico Modugno, well known by the name of its chorus “Volare”, before reprising her own song “Nothing is impossible” (Nothing is impossible, in French).
- The Italian anthem sung by Laura Pausini
In addition to Mariah Carey and Andrea Bocelli, the Milan-Cortina organization has also chosen to highlight Italian artists, recognized worldwide. The famous singer Laura Pausini had the honor of taking to the same stage of San Siro to sing the Italian anthem “Fratelli d’Italia” (Brothers of Italy), also sung simultaneously in Cortina by a choir. A magnificent vocal performance on an anthem known around the world and loved by sports fans.
- The Olympic rings in the Milanese sky
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the first ever Distributed Olympic Games! »: this is how a voice resonated in the San Siro stadium at the moment when the five Olympic rings, symbols of the continents, came together in the air above the 180 dancers in full performance.
We had to wait to see them! Olympic Games 2030 in the Alps obliged, the French delegation took part in the parade in penultimate position, just in front of the organizing country, Italy. 130 athletes (out of 162) paraded in San Siro, Cortina, Predazzo and Livigno. It was on this last site that the two standard bearers, the snowboarder Chloé Trespeuch and the alpine skier Clément Noël, entered, both holding the tricolor flag, but it was at Predazzo that all eyes were on the fall – voluntary or not – of the cross-country skier Jules Lapierre.
- The two basins lit
The ceremony concluded with the traditional lighting of the cauldron, or rather the Olympic cauldrons! Three huge names in Italian sport were the last torchbearers: alpine skier Sofia Goggia in Cortina, and Alberto Tomba and Deborah Compagnoni at the Arco della Pace in Milan, all three lit the two Olympic cauldrons on the two main sites of these Milan-Cortina Olympics, before a sublime fireworks display.
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