What Do the 2026 Winter Olympic Medals Look Like?

The Winter Olympics are here. This year’s Games will take place in Milan and Cortina, Italy, highlighting the biggest winter sports and athletes from all across the world.
The goal for every athlete traveling to Italy in February is to take home one of the iconic Olympic medals, whether that’s a gold, silver or bronze. Every Summer and Winter Olympic Games designs a special edition of the medals, so it’s always exciting to see how the product turns out.
This year’s Olympic medals are unique in many ways. Here’s a breakdown of the design Milan-Cortina went with for this year’s Games.
What do the 2026 Winter Olympic medals look like?

The gold, silver and bronze medals all have similar designs on them this year. The standout piece from the medals is the two different surfaces shown in halves on both sides of the medals. The Olympics described this half feature as a way to “[celebrate] the power of differences—two unique halves coming together to create a bold, unified statement.”
The top half has a granular texture, while the bottom half is a more mirrored surface. On the front of the medal, the five Olympic rings are shown in the middle, with the half splitting it between. On the back, the event for which the medal is being given out for is etched on the bottom, while the Milan-Cortina logo is shown on the top.
The Olympics partnered with Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato to create the medals.
What do the 2026 Winter Paralympic medals look like?

The Paralympic medals mirror the Winter Olympic medals, but include some accessability friendly features. For one, the side of all the medals include a tally mark for which place the athlete finished.

The Paralympic medals also include braille on the back side to read what sport the athlete received the medal in.
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Madison Williams is a staff writer on the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated, where she specializes in tennis but covers a wide range of sports from a national perspective. Before joining SI in 2022, Williams worked at The Sporting News. Having graduated from Augustana College, she completed a master’s in sports media at Northwestern University. She is a dog mom and an avid reader.
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