How Many Countries Are at the Winter Olympics? Complete Breakdown of Nations

A certain image of the Winter Olympics persists in the American imagination: a ski-fest ruled by Austrians and Norwegians, with occasional interludes dominated by other cold-weather nations.

It's true: the all-time Winter Olympic medal table is dominated by the Global North, and the Norwegians specifically have topped the medal table in each of the last three Games. However, the Olympic movement has made a concerted effort to promote the growth of winter sports in warmer-weather nations, which has galvanized slow progress toward the Winter Games resembling its more diverse Summer counterpart.

Here is a look at the projected national makeup of February's Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy—as well as a look at how that makeup has changed over the years.

The Official Count: Nations at Beijing 2022 and Milan Cortina 2026

The ’22 Games in Beijing included a total of 91 delegations, counting the Russian Olympic Committee—prohibited from using the Russian flag due to that country’s 2019 doping scandal.

The ’26 event is expected to include 86 delegations at the moment, not counting “Individual Neutral Athletes"—that is, Belarusian and Russian athletes who meet International Olympic Committee specifications following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in Feb. 2022. In September, amid international speculation, the IOC indicated that Israel would be permitted to participate amid allegations that the nation is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.

From Chamonix 1924 to today: How participation has evolved

When the Winter Olympics came into being in 1924 in the ski resort town of Chamonix, France, they were a small-scale affair. The host nation welcomed 15 other participants to the landmark event: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States and Yugoslavia.

Since then, however, the Games have exploded in popularity. Here is a look at the evolution of the field over time, and some notable debutant nations in each edition.

SITE	YEAR	NUMBER OF COMPETING NATIONS	NOTABLE DEBUTANTS
Chamonix, France	1924	16	Canada, France, United States
St. Moritz, Switzerland	1928	25	Argentina, Germany, Japan
Lake Placid, N.Y.	1932	17	N/A
Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany	1936	28	Australia, Spain, Turkey
St. Moritz, Switzerland	1948	28	Chile, Denmark, South Korea
Oslo	1952	30	New Zealand, Portugal
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy	1956	32	Bolivia, Iran, USSR
Squaw Valley (now Olympic Valley), Calif.	1960	30	South Africa
Innsbruck, Austria	1964	36	India, Mongolia, North Korea
Grenoble, France	1968	37	Morocco
Sapporo, Japan	1972	35	Philippines, Taiwan
Innsbruck, Austria	1976	37	Andorra, San Marino
Lake Placid, N.Y.	1980	37	China, Costa Rica, Cyprus
Sarajevo	1984	49	Egypt, Monaco, Puerto Rico
Calgary	1988	57	Guam, Jamaica, U.S. Virgin Islands
Albertville, France	1992	64	Algeria, Brazil, Ireland
Lillehammer, Norway	1994	67	Kazakhstan, Trinidad and Tobago, Ukraine
Nagano, Japan	1998	72	Azerbaijan, Kenya, Venezuela
Salt Lake City	2002	78	Cameroon, Hong Kong, Thailand
Turin, Italy	2006	80	Albania, Ethiopia, Madagascar
Vancouver	2010	82	Pakistan, Peru, Serbia
Sochi, Russia	2014	88	Paraguay, Tonga, Zimbabwe
Pyeongchang, South Korea	2018	93	Ecuador, Nigeria, Singapore
Beijing	2022	91	Haiti, Saudi Arabia
Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy	2026	91	Benin, Guinea-Bissau, United Arab Emirates

Where do Winter Olympians come from?

Due to climactic and financial constraints, Winter Olympians overwhelmingly come from cold-weather nations with deep winter-sports infrastructure.

Of the 10 most successful nations on the all-time Winter Olympic medal table, eight are European: Norway, Germany, Austria, the USSR, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and the Netherlands. That the Norwegians lead the all-time medal table is particularly shocking, considering its population is just 5.6 million, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles when your country appears to have evolved over eons with skiing specifically in mind.

The two outliers in the top 10 are the United States (second) and Canada (fifth). Both countries have formidable infrastructure and have hosted multiple Games, although the Canadians’ success skews recent (they won a record 14 gold medals in Vancouver in 2010). Outside of Europe and North America, China, Japan and South Korea—all past hosts with cold-weather locales—rank in the top 25.

Success is scant elsewhere. Australia has 19 medals, more than three-quarters of which are in freestyle skiing and snowboarding. Kazakhstan has eight since the USSR’s dissolution, half in cross country skiing. New Zealand has six, North Korea two, and Uzbekistan one. Africa and Latin America are still seeking their first winter medals, and will send large nations such as Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Morocco and Nigeria to Milan in search of glory.

How a country qualifies for the Winter Olympics

In order to qualify for either the Summer or Winter Olympics, an athlete must be a member of a national Olympic committee. Not every nation has one—notable countries without one include the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Macau, New Caledonia, and the Turks and Caicos.

Every sport’s qualification system is different. To name a few: hockey uses world rankings and a series of qualification tournaments; curling uses the results of recent world championships and a qualification tournament; alpine skiing uses the World Cup points list with quotas to prevent nations from sending more than 22 athletes; luge designates specific events as “Olympic qualification ranking events.”

Quotas are crucial for helping bolster winter sports in nations without winter sports infrastructure (they are used liberally in the Summer Games as well). It is with the help of this system that three nations will make their Winter Olympic debuts.

New and debuting nations in 2026

Benin will send alpine skier Nathan Tchibozo (formerly a representative of Togo), Guinea-Bissau will send Utah-trained alpine skier Winston Tang and the United Arab Emirates will send alpine skiers Alexander Astridge (who learned to ski in a Dubai shopping center) and Piera Hudson (formerly of New Zealand). None of these countries have previously sent a representative to the Winter Olympics.

Excitement in these nations is high. Benin’s Olympic committee went to great lengths to tout their achievement in a press release, while the FIS highlighted Astridge’s unique upbringing. Because the Olympics tend to attract a human-interest audience beyond sports fans, look for these stories to receive media coverage in the United States and elsewhere.

Why some nations sit out the Winter Olympics

The most formidable barrier to Winter Olympic participation is winter itself—which countries have it, and which countries don’t. For this reason, more than 40% of all National Olympic Committees have never sent delegations to the Winter Games. Some of the more high-profile nations never to compete include Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Qatar and Vietnam.

In a few rare cases, the circumstances preventing countries from competing are neither climactic nor economic but political. Greenland, for instance, is a recognized member of the International Biathlon Union but not of the International Olympic Committee—ergo a Greenlandic biathlete could not compete in the Winter Olympics under their flag.