What happens when the Winter Olympics run out of winter?

The overwinter Olympics and Paralympics feature, for decades, been a jubilation of snowfall, common cold and mountains — a global showcase for sports built on reliable winter conditions. 

But as temperatures rise and snowfall becomes harder to count on, that foundation is far from solid — and environmental experts say Olympic organizers are still overselling how “sustainable” the Games can be.

With Italy set to host the next Winter Olympics in just weeks, followed by the Paralympic Games in March, that tension is already shaping planning decisions, infrastructure choices and climate promises, and exposing how hard those promises are to keep.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has acknowledged the problem. A 2024 study it commissioned found that only about half of previous Winter Olympics host cities would still be cold enough to host the Games by the 2050s.

A November 2025 ski-resilience index tracking snow reliability ranked many resorts as increasingly vulnerable, with Cortina d’Ampezzo, the Alpine town and main site of the upcoming Games, squarely in the middle. Researchers say that raises doubts about what happens once the Olympic spotlight fades.

Still, the IOC insists its climate goals remain on track.

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It aims to cut carbon emissions by 50 per cent by 2030 and now requires host cities to rely almost entirely on existing or temporary venues.

Snow competition sites, it says, must remain “climate reliable” — meaning they have to be cold and snowy enough to hold events without excessive technical intervention — until at least mid-century.

Temperatures in the Italian Alps are already above long-term averages. February highs in Milan can reach 10.2 C. In Cortina, the average is now about 4.2 C. Natural snowpack, which is still central to fair competition, has become increasingly hit-or-miss. Artificial snow and refrigeration are no longer backups, but a necessity.

Organizers say Italy has a solid history of sustainability at the centre of planning big events. 

Gloria Zavatta, the sustainability and impact director for the upcoming Winter Games, points to the 2006 Turin Olympics and the 2015 Milan Expo as early attempts to measure and manage emissions. 

These events, she said, laid the groundwork for Milano-Cortina’s approach, which follows the ISO 14064 international standard for greenhouse-gas reporting and commits organizers to producing a full CO2 inventory by the end of 2026, with the goal of offsetting those emissions.

The accounting, though, has major limits. It covers what organizers directly control — venue energy use during the Games, the Olympic transport system and temporary infrastructure. But it excludes what is often one of the biggest sources of emissions at major sporting events: spectator travel.

“We are sending [spectators] and international federations some guidelines, inviting them to use the most sustainable way of transport, to reduce flights and use of single vehicles, to use collective and public transport,” Zavatta said. “But it’s not under our control.”

Zavatta said the event provides an important opportunity to raise awareness about climate change.

That argument doesn’t convince everyone.

“I find it kind of comical that raising awareness among fans is the goal of an event with budgets this big,” said Madeleine Orr, assistant professor in Sport Ecology at the University of Toronto. “The plan with the 2010 Vancouver Olympics was raising awareness on climate change. I mean, what are we doing? It’s 2026.”

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Orr says recent Games show both how far organizers can push sustainability efforts and where they hit a wall.

She points to the Paris 2024 Summer Games as the closest any Olympics has come to meeting stringent sustainability criteria, and says the Milano-Cortina Games will inevitably fall short of that benchmark. 

But she also says even Paris overstated its achievements — promoting itself as a “carbon positive” Games for two years before retreating to “carbon neutral” after researchers challenged the claim.

"They were so obsessed with this narrative that they were sustainable and perfect that they sank themselves," Orr said. 

One of the researchers who challenged the Paris claims was Tiberio Daddi, a sports sustainability expert and associate professor at the Institute of Management of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa. He has worked with the International Ski Federation and the International Biathlon Union on life-cycle assessments of sports events.

Daddi says his findings show the biggest impacts almost always come from travel and accommodation.

“With soccer, where large numbers of fans are travelling, the impact of travel can make up as much as 60 per cent of the overall footprint,” he said.

Daddi says Olympic accounting should at least attempt to estimate emissions from spectator travel, athlete and staff mobility, and logistics — from shipping equipment to powering global broadcasts.

He says  ISO 14064 is solid in theory but unevenly applied in practice. Carbon gets attention. Waste, noise, visual impacts and biodiversity often do not.

“They should clearly state what they are including in their assessment and what they are not,” Daddi said.

Orr raises similar concerns about how Olympic organizers define the term “reuse.”

Organizers say 92 per cent of Milano-Cortina venues already exist, with only two new structures being built, both in Milan: the Olympic Village slated to become student housing after the Games, and the Santa Giulia arena for men’s hockey, planned as a concert venue later.

But major renovations to existing facilities are not fully reflected in emissions totals.

“This is the kind of creative accounting Qatar was using with the FIFA World Cup,” Orr said. “They said, ‘We built all these stadiums but they’re going to be used indefinitely, so we’re really only responsible for two weeks of that stadium’s emissions.’ And, well, no, actually. If the Winter Olympics didn’t exist, these renos wouldn’t have happened.”

Timing, she says, is part of the problem. Sustainability planning for Milano-Cortina came late, after key construction decisions were already locked in.

Nowhere is that more visible than at the controversial sliding centre in the Alpine town of Cortina, where organizers emphasized reuse of the existing Eugenio Monti luge track.

But critics — and there have been many in Italy — say the project became a near-total rebuild, starting with the felling of hundreds of mature larch trees to make space for the wider construction footprint.

Early tenders to construct the complex reportedly failed, and costs climbed to well over €100 million, or $160 million Cdn. 

Even though the ice chute was completed in record time, concerns remain. Sliding tracks need energy-intensive refrigeration and yearly maintenance.

With a tiny number of global luge, bobsleigh and skeleton athletes, many have pointed out the venue risks becoming a white elephant — expensive to run and barely used long after the Games end.

Zavatta said the decision to build the sliding centre rested with the region, not by the organizing committee, and that using an existing track in Austria, another option floated, would have been difficult to co-ordinate across borders.

Orr says the bigger issue remains.

“Huge international spectacles are antithetical to being sustainable,” she said. “There’s no version of those events that are.”

That argument is now being echoed from inside the winter sport community. 

International Ski and Snowboard Federation president Johan Eliasch has warned that rising costs, climate pressure and underused Olympic infrastructure are pushing the Winter Games toward a breaking point.

He is among those calling for a rotation model, in which a small number of climate-stable venues take turns hosting. While no official list exists, sites often mentioned are Vancouver–Whistler, Calgary–Canmore, Salt Lake City–Park City, Utah, Lillehammer, Norway, and Sapporo, Japan.

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Snowmaking, increasingly essential to the Winter Games, shows why the system is under pressure.

Nemanja Dogo, executive sales manager at TechnoAlpin, which is running about 90 per cent of snow delivery operations for Milano-Cortina, says snow making is most effective when temperatures fall roughly between -6C and -2C, using wet-bulb temperature — a combined measure of air temperature and humidity — to determine whether snow can be produced at all.

“We’re always talking about the window when we can make snow, to not lose energy and efficiency,” Dogo said.

Artificial — or “technical” — snow also has limits: a natural base of snow is still needed to stabilize slopes and ensure safe, fair competition at Olympic scale. 

Producing that snow requires significant amounts of water, pushing many resorts to rely more on stored supplies, including artificial reservoirs that can also support other uses, from summer water management to firefighting.

As climate pressure builds, ideas for reshaping the Winter Games continue to circulate. None offers an easy fix. 

What is clear, though, is that an event designed to showcase winter, snow and mountains is now fighting to reproduce those foundational conditions — now raising questions about how long the model can hold.

Rome correspondent

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