The upcoming Winter Olympic, dubbed the Milano Cortina 2026 Games, will last 17 days in and around the stunning Italian Alps. In 2026, Milano-Cortina will host the Winter Olympic 2026 from 6 to 22 February. A month later, the Paralympics will feature six sports from March 6 to 15. A total of 3,500 athletes will take part. represent 93 countries.

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Attendees of the Winter Olympic 2026 will witness some of the world’s best athletes vying for gold, silver, and bronze. The competitions at the Winter Olympic include Olympic figure skating, Olympic cross-country skiing, Olympic bobsleighing, Olympic snowboarding, and Olympic freestyle skiing. There will also be Olympic ice hockey, curling, speed skating, and much more. The sport of ski mountaineering will also see its debut during the games.

A school of young students in Taverna designed the Olympic mascots, two stoats named Tina and Milo. The animals, found in Eurasia and North America, are mustelids related to otters and weasels.

The Location of the Winter Olympic 2026

The Winter Olympics events will take place over an area of ​​more than 22,000 square kilometers. Competitions and ceremonies will take place in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Bormio, Livigno, Predazzo, Tesero, Anterselva/Antholz and Verona.

The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games will take place at the San Siro stadium in Milan, and the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games will take place at the Arena di Verona in Verona. The opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games will take place in Verona, and the closing ceremony will take place in Cortina d’Ampezzo.

Olympic Ice Hockey for the Winter Olympic 2026 at a Glance Before Qualification

Slovakia, Latvia and Denmark will host the final qualifying games for men’s hockey for the 2026 Winter Olympics later this month. In anticipation of these large-scale games, in this post we will look at how Olympic qualification was determined in general, and even touch on the Russian factor.

All about Jersey. New Jersey Devils Top 25 Under 25. For the Devils organization, the final major move of the offseason is the new signing of Dawson Mercer. Then we’ll wait until the Prospects Challenge in Buffalo to get a taste of Devils hockey. Exhibition hockey, played by promising players, but hockey nonetheless. In the middle of all this will be the final stage of qualifying for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina. 12 countries will host their biggest games in 2024 at the end of August. First, let’s take a moment during the offseason to look at the Winter Olympics’ preparations for Olympic ice hockey.

IIHF’s Role in Olympic Ice Hockey: Governing the Process

As with other sports at the Winter Olympics, the international governing body controls the process of deciding who will participate. For men’s and women’s ice hockey, it is the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF). They control transitions from league to league, set requirements for who can play for which country, and manage events such as the World Cup.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) oversees the Olympic Games. They have already decided that in Milan they will play hockey at the PalaItalia and Fiera Milano Rho stadiums, which are under development. The NHL has agreed to release its players for the 2026 Winter Olympics, giving fans another reason to watch the games in February 2026. 12 countries will participate in these games. Although there is still a year and a half left before the tournament, the process of determining participants will be completed before September 2, 2024.

Winter Olympic 2026 – The Automatically Qualified

Eight of the twelve nations are already known. Italy, the host of the Olympic Games, will take part in this tournament. The road to Milan began in 2023 when the IIHF decided to grant automatic qualification to the top eight countries based on the IIHF World Rankings in 2023 after the World Championships that year. This is where things get more difficult to understand.

The IIHF World Rankings are based on previous IIHF tournaments over the past four years. The rankings today, in August 2024, will be based on the 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 World Championship tournaments, as well as the 2022 Winter Olympics. Although the IOC oversees the Olympic Games, the IIHF considers the tournament an IIHF event as they set the criteria for who plays in it.

Points are awarded based on how a country finishes in these tournaments, and there is a coefficient to evaluate recent results compared to four years ago. The current year counts as 100%, previous years are reduced by 25% each, so teams cannot live off long-term success. The idea is to raise the level of teams that show consistent results at the World Cup and Olympic Games.

Germany’s Rise in Olympic Ice Hockey Rankings

However, the road to Milan began in 2023, meaning that the tournaments they count towards would take place in 2020, which in fact did not happen due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. And many countries did not participate in the 2021 tournaments. Therefore, the IIHF decided to use the pre-championship report to allocate positions based on the results of 2019, 2019 and 2020. Although the 2020 results will carry the least weight, they were included in the 2023 rankings. Following these results are, in order, Canada, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Czech Republic, USA, Germany and Switzerland, while the top eight are followed by Slovakia, Latvia, Norway and Denmark.

These top eight in 2020 ended up in the top eight in the 2023 rankings. Not in that order. The 2023 ranking included: Canada, Finland, Russia, USA, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. All eight participants will automatically qualify for the Olympic Games. And I had the same questions you might have: Germany instead of Sweden? Is the Czech Republic holding on to eighth place? What about Slovakia?

A deeper look into the last four tournaments held shows why. Germany’s fourth place at the 2021 World Cup and second place at the 2023 World Cup, sandwiched between a disappointing 2022 Olympics, really lifted the Germans. (By the way: Although not included in the rankings, Germany did take silver at the 2018 Olympics.) Instead of automatically being on the brink of qualifying, they were firmly in their place.

Sweden’s Struggles: Consistent but Not Enough

The Swedes finished 9th, 6th and 6th at the 2021-2023 World Cup, preventing their fourth place finish in Beijing. Switzerland did slightly better at the same championships, finishing 6th, 5th and 5th, but an eighth-place finish in Beijing saw them fall behind. As for the Czechs, their salvation was bronze at the 2022 World Championships, 7th and 8th places at two other World Championships and 9th place at the Olympic Games. (Except #2: Their World Cup win in 2024 should help with the 2030 games in Salt Lake City.) That’s how Germany beat three countries better known for hockey than the Germans.

And despite these disappointing results, they outperformed the rest of the pack. Slovakia did take bronze in Beijing back in 2022, but finished no better than eighth at the World Championships. 7th place this year further confirms their position outside the automatic qualifiers. Likewise, the world ranking format also prevented Latvia from winning bronze at the 2023 World Championships, given its worse results in other tournaments. Beyond these two, the countries ended up more than 200 points behind the eighth-place Czech Republic. Of course, there is an elephant in the room among the top eight teams in 2023.

Winter Olympic 2026 – The Russian Factor

Russia has been a hockey power as long as international hockey has been in place. They are also currently not in the picture in recent years. I typically avoid politics here as they invite a lot of elements and it often does not apply to the subject. Russia’s acts of war in invading Ukraine is a major reason why Russia has been banned from many international competitions, including ones hosted by the IIHF.

It is a very tangible and real concern to many literally closer to the Russian western border. Many of those nations have a real reason to fear that they could be next after Ukraine. As such, those nations do not want to act like there is no issue and let them play.

Because the IIHF does not want to fall out of favor with much of the European continent and go against the international governing bodies of other sports, they followed their wishes and excluded Russia and Belarus from their tournaments.

Russia’s Points Despite Absence: A Controversial Ranking

Of course, it’s never that simple. Even though they were not allowed to play, the IIHF still gave them points based on their 2021 ranking (from when they played) and included them in their 2023 rankings, which determine who automatically qualifies for the Olympics 2026. For Belarus this does not matter. They were never close. Russia, on the other hand, maintains third place in the world thanks to an organization that has prevented it from participating in its tournaments for the past three years.

The question of whether Russia will be allowed to participate in the 2026 Winter Olympics remains open. They were banned back in 2022 at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, except for athletes willing to agree to compete under an individual neutral athlete name. They did not back down from this then, since the war in Ukraine is still ongoing. I’m sure it didn’t help that the Russian doping program was still fresh in the minds of international sports groups, as the Russians were disqualified and teams and players had to compete under the ROC (Russian Olympic Committee) name in 2021 and 2022.

Likewise, the IIHF’s problems with Russia may run a little deeper than just geopolitics and a continent that doesn’t want to play well with someone who doesn’t. The “Ivan Fedotov Saga” did not lead to the arrest of Russian players while playing as observers. I’m holding the letter “L” here. However, the Russian Hockey Federation did not respond very well to the IIHF.

Belarus Excluded: Olympic Dreams Dashed

This led to tougher penalties in May. For this they punished Fedotov, CSKA and the federation. Fedotov’s contract was terminated so he could join the Flyers, but that termination came months after IIHF sanctions were confirmed in December 2023. CSKA was given a two-year international transfer ban in addition to the fines imposed on the federation. Despite this ban, CSKA Moscow signed six Russian players from North America earlier this week. The ban was supposed to go into effect on August 11, but according to Josh Erickson of Pro Hockey Rumors, the KHL split from the federation, so the ban is no longer enforceable.

Overall, it seems to me that the Russian Federation – even if the KHL is technically separate from it, I don’t believe they are actually separate – is trying to bypass the IIHF. Even if the war ends by February 2026, I’d like to think that some in the IIHF might not rush to bring Russia back, given their brazenness. Of course, things can change.

A decision on this matter will be made sooner or later. The decision to ban Belarus and Russia from IIHF competition for the upcoming season resulted in the Belarusians being effectively excluded from Olympic qualifying. Russia’s automatic entry depends on the IIHF meeting in May 2025. And the placement could open up another opportunity for the final twelve countries to qualify for the 2026 Winter Olympics later this month.

Olympic 2026 – Twelve Nations, Three Spots for Milan

Starting in 2023, there would have been three qualifying rounds for the 2026 Winter Olympics. Ultimately the first round was cancelled. Twelve national teams took part in the next two rounds, divided into three groups of four. The winners of each group advance to the next round. The rest was done. From these countries, the next eight countries (excluding Belarus) in the world rankings will take part in the final qualifying round. They will play with those who survived the other rounds and made it this far. This is exactly how they will play from August 29 to September 1.

Group D will be held in Bratislava, Slovakia: Slovakia (No. 9 in the 2023 rankings), Kazakhstan (No. 15), Austria (No. 16), Hungary (No. 18, the best 2nd place team in the third round)

Group E will be held in Riga, Latvia: Latvia (No. 10), France (No. 13), Slovenia (No. 17), Ukraine (No. 26, won the third-round group).

F Group, held in Aalborg, Denmark: Denmark (#11), Norway (#12), Great Britain (#19, won third round group), Japan (#24, won third round group).

Japan, Ukraine, and Great Britain: Contenders for the Final Olympic Spots

Japan, Ukraine and Great Britain can all say they deserve this opportunity given their previous qualifying performance earlier this year. Hungary would not normally be in this round as they did not win their group in the last round. They are here because Belarus was not allowed to play in the 2024/25 season. So, they have an extra chance at the Olympics.

This group format is especially unforgiving. Only the winners of each group are guaranteed to advance. One bad night and that’s it. One tough goalie, one tough night with the puck, one questionable referee play, and so on. These groups will play three games over four days and they will decide who will make it to the big international stage in a year and a half. Why now? Because, again, qualifying started a year after the previous Olympics, and they need to run through all 40+ countries (or 35 in this case) to find out.

Finishing ahead of someone at the World Championships can also matter here. Ukraine narrowly missed out on qualifying for the second round by just 70 points. A worse result than Estonia in one year could mean it would be more difficult for them to get that far. Likewise, Japan finished just ahead of China, a result of them having the best results at the 2022 and 2023 World Cups and having a group from which they could qualify, while China were given tougher draws with Great Britain and Romania, who defeated the Chinese back in February. 10-1 and 6-1 respectively.

NHL Players in Olympic Qualifiers: A Higher Stakes Game

And the national teams are taking this as seriously as they would any NHL playoff situation. Slovakia have confirmed that Simon Nemec and Tomas Tatar will be on the team, and they recently decided that they will allow KHL players into the lineup precisely so that they have the best possible roster. A big step up from their previous decision to not allow them into their World Cup teams. Expect more NHL players to take part as well.

I’ll try to talk more about these qualifiers on August 25th. The thing is, it means so much more than any preseason or exhibition tournament. Let’s hope there’s an easy way to follow your passion for hockey. Again, there is little margin for error.

What about Russia? If the IIHF decides not to allow Russia to participate and the IOC agrees, who will take their place? There are two possibilities. The first possibility is to take the best second-placed team from these three groups. Goal difference could very well decide who goes to Milan or not. The second option is to select the highest ranked country that did not qualify. This will benefit the host countries. Especially Slovakia, which ranks first among all 12 national teams. Not that I expect them to take that spot in gaming later this month.

Men’s Olympic Ice Hockey Roster: Nearing Completion

Either way, this is an overview of how the Men’s Hockey Winter Olympic 2026 roster is very close to determined. I do find it strange that the qualifications won’t end next year, closer to the actual tournament. Again, the IIHF has established automatic rankings and seeding decisions based on rankings, which will be almost 3 years old when the hockey world turns to Milan in February 2026. They need to give time for all the countries that want to participate to play out their qualifications and do so without disrupting the traditional hockey calendar too much. So, we are on the cusp of meaningful international hockey.

Experience the magic and excitement as fans from around the world gather to celebrate the spirit of the Games. Secure your Olympic Opening Ceremony Tickets now and create memories that will last a lifetime at the unforgettable  Winter Olympic 2026.