The Warming of the Winter Olympics

As athletes race down the slopes in Milan 2026, it is sad to realize that not much of that snow is real anymore. While millions of people around the world eagerly anticipate the games every four years, the future of the Winter Olympics is getting increasingly uncertain.

Looking back nearly a century, the origin of the modern-day Winter Olympics took place five years after the birth of the Summer Olympics. Its predecessor, the Nordic Games, included only athletes from Scandinavian countries and was held quadrennially in Sweden. The Winter Olympics then underwent decades of reform. Eventually, the Winter Sports Week that took place in Chamonix, France, with approximately 250 athletes competing for 16 countries in 16 events, was considered a great success and later recognized as the first official Winter Olympics. 

Four years after the extraordinary Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022, Italy received its chance to host—beating a joint bid made by Stockholm and Are, Sweden. The significance of the Winter Olympics 2026 isn’t only being the first Olympic games to be co-hosted by two cities, but the fact that the games reached their highest percentage of women participants in history at 47%. 

Athletes in Milan Winter Olympic-Photo Credit: LA Times

However, for the just-concluded 25th Winter Olympic Games in Milan and any other future Winter Olympic Games, climate change is no longer a distant environmental concern but a direct threat to the future of the Winter Olympics. Firstly, the rapid climate change makes it hard to host the Winter Olympics. Due to climate change, a large number of countries become climate-irreliable, thus not qualifying to become a host. For example, the organization Climate Central points out that the current host city of the Winter Olympics 2026, Cortina d’Ampezzo, now sees 41 (19%) fewer freezing days annually than when the Games were first held there in 1956. According to the Washington Post, scientists have predicted that by the middle of this century, there will be only 20 countries and 52 locations that have climate-reliability and infrastructure to support a Winter Olympics—a huge drop compared to the current 93 available locations. In addition to the lack of hosts, for climate-reliable cities, artificial snow-making is already becoming a part of the game. This situation has appeared since the Olympic Games in 1980, Lake Placid. Stepping into the 21st century, host cities have become heavily dependent on artificial snow. Data provided by the Washington Post shows that the percentage of snow that is machine-made in the Milan Olympics 2026 is reaching 85-100%, which is extremely high. The serious reliance on machine-made snow is raising environmental concerns, not only contributing to additional environmental pollution through high energy consumption and water usage, but also highlighting the severity of global warming.

The Winter Olympics is a warning sign; the challenges the games face reflect a broader global reality. According to data collected in 2024, 2015-2024 had been the hottest 10 years in history, and 2024 is known as the hottest year since 1850. The global average temperature has increased by 1.29ºC. These changes might seem small, but the roughly 1ºC change requires an incredible amount of energy considering the area of Earth. Thus, severe climate change has made a profound impact on the environment, and the damage is worsening. Across the globe, sea levels are rising, natural disasters such as hurricanes and wildfires happen more frequently, and ecosystems are destroyed, causing biodiversity to go down and threatening food security.

Although now the IOC (International Olympic Committee) decided to start the Winter Olympics earlier to address the issue, future Olympics should not adapt to climate change—they must respond to it. As stopping climate change involves cooperation between countries, the IOC must take the responsibility of setting environmental standards and rules for hosting countries. 

Nearly a century ago, the first Winter Olympics were held on the snow-covered mountain of Chamonix, celebrating humans’ extreme sports ability. Now, the future of the games will not only depend on athletic abilities but also on environmental changes. The shrinking snow fields of Milan will be a reminder for us that the impact of global warming is no longer theoretical:whether future generations can experience the Winter Olympics depends on our decisions today.