How to follow and watch the 2026 Olympic Winter Games

The 2026 Olympic Winter Games in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo delivered one of the most globally accessible editions of the Winter Games in the event’s century-long history — and for viewers who still want to relive, replay, or catch up on every jaw-dropping moment, the platforms and options available are broader than ever before.

Running from February 6 through February 22, 2026, the Milano Cortina 2026 Games brought together nearly 2,900 athletes from more than 90 National Olympic Committees, competing across 116 medal events in 16 disciplines spread over 15 venues across northern Italy. The backdrop — San Siro for the Opening Ceremony, the ancient Verona Arena for the Closing Ceremony, and the snow-draped Dolomites in between — set a stage that was as visually spectacular as the competition itself.

Whether you watched it all live, caught only the highlights, or are just now circling back to digest what happened, this guide breaks down exactly how the Games were broadcast, streamed, and followed across every major market — and how to keep watching the action continue with the Paralympic Winter Games running through March 15.

Where to Watch in the United States: NBC, Peacock, and the Cable Lineup

For American audiences, the primary broadcast home of the 2026 Winter Games was NBC, which carried at least five hours of daytime coverage every day and anchored prime-time viewing with its signature nightly show, Primetime in Milan — a three-hour recap-and-highlights program hosted by veteran Olympics anchor Mike Tirico, who was joined later in the evening by hosts Maria Taylor and Craig Melvin on a late-night companion broadcast. The model mirrored NBC’s approach during the 2024 Paris Summer Games and proved highly effective for fans working around the six-hour time difference between Italy and the U.S. Eastern Time Zone.

Cable viewers were not left behind. USA Network and CNBC both carried select events throughout the Games, providing alternative windows into competition that ran parallel to the NBC main feed. It is worth noting that although NBC spun off its cable properties — including USA Network and CNBC — into a new company called Versant in January 2026, those channels continued to carry Olympics coverage under an existing agreement, ensuring no disruption for viewers.

The most comprehensive way to watch, however, was Peacock. NBCUniversal’s streaming platform delivered all 116 medal events live, including full venue feeds with only natural sound for fans who prefer crowd noise and blade-on-ice atmosphere over commentary. Peacock also introduced several viewer-friendly innovations for 2026: the Gold Zone “whip-around” feature kept fans updated on the biggest moments across every sport simultaneously, while Rinkside Live offered multi-angle access to skating and hockey events. A Prediction Games module on the Peacock mobile app let fans guess outcomes and track results in real time — a nod to the growing gamification of sports viewership.

Fans with a cable subscription also had the option to authenticate on NBCOlympics.com, NBC.com, the NBC app, or the NBC Sports app to stream all events live — extending full coverage to any device without an additional subscription.

International Broadcasters: Watching the Games Around the World

Fans outside the United States had their own comprehensive coverage networks to navigate. The scale of the 2026 Games’ global broadcast footprint was genuinely historic: according to official IOC reporting at the midpoint of competition, Warner Bros. Discovery described Milano Cortina 2026 as the most streamed Winter Games ever through its HBO Max and discovery+ platforms in Europe. By the end of the first weekend, nearly 31 million Italians — more than half the country’s population — had already tuned in to coverage on state broadcaster RAI.

Across Europe, the broadcast landscape was shaped by a landmark rights deal the IOC struck in January 2023, renewing its agreement with Warner Bros. Discovery Sports to run from 2026 through 2032. That contract covers pay-television and streaming rights on Eurosport and Discovery+ across 49 European territories. Free-to-air rights were simultaneously awarded to the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and its member broadcasters, ensuring broad public access throughout the continent. In Italy specifically, RAI held free-to-air digital rights under a sub-license arrangement with the EBU, meaning domestic viewers had both the national public option and Eurosport’s more comprehensive streaming coverage.

For viewers in other regions across Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Pacific, the official IOC page at olympics.com maintained an updated list of official media rights holders in each country. The IOC has consistently emphasized digital accessibility, and the 2026 Games represented the strongest evidence yet of that commitment: the Olympics’ official web and app platform was on track to surpass 90 million users during the Games, including 21 million in the United States alone — far ahead of the 68 million total users recorded across the entirety of the Beijing 2022 Winter Games.

Social Media, On-Demand Replays, and Following the Games in Real Time

Even for fans who could not always tune in for live competition, the 2026 Games offered an unprecedented volume of real-time and on-demand content across digital platforms. Official Olympic social media handles across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter) generated more than 7.9 billion engagements during the Games — a figure that underscores just how much the Winter Olympics has grown as a social media event, not merely a television one.

NBC brought X into its broadcast ecosystem with exclusive original live content on the platform, designed for interactive fan engagement during competition. That approach extended coverage well beyond the living room and into wherever audiences were on their phones — on lunch breaks, during commutes, or watching second-screen while monitoring other programming.

For structured replay viewing, Peacock’s replay hub made full event streams available for 24 hours after each live broadcast. NBCOlympics.com also maintained a replays section that allowed fans to revisit races, figure skating programs, hockey games, and every other discipline at their own pace. NBC additionally introduced OLI — an AI-powered Olympic guide embedded in its digital platforms — to help viewers navigate the enormous volume of content and surface personalized recommendations based on which athletes and sports they followed most closely.

The social media strategy from Team USA and individual athletes also proved an effective way to follow competition outside of traditional broadcasts. With the U.S. sending 232 athletes to Milan and Cortina — its largest Winter Olympic contingent ever, drawn from 32 states and ranging in age from 15 to 54 — there was no shortage of personal accounts posting training clips, medal celebrations, and behind-the-scenes glimpses from the venues.

What Made This Edition Worth Watching: New Sports, NHL Stars, and a Historic Host

Beyond the logistics of how to find coverage, the more compelling question for many fans entering 2026 was simply: why should this Winter Games demand your attention above previous editions? There were several compelling answers.

For the first time since Sochi 2014, NHL players returned to the Winter Olympics, transforming the men’s ice hockey tournament into a genuine best-on-best competition. The American and Canadian rosters — anchored by Connor McDavid and Auston Matthews respectively — delivered what amounted to a rematch of both the iconic 2010 Vancouver gold medal game and the highly-watched 2025 4 Nations Face-Off final. The men’s ice hockey tournament alone generated some of the most-watched moments of the entire Games in the United States.

Ski mountaineering made its Olympic debut at Milano Cortina 2026, becoming the 16th discipline in the Winter Games program. The sport — in which athletes race uphill and downhill across mountain terrain, alternating between skiing and travel on foot — was a natural fit for the Italian alpine landscape and drew considerable curiosity from sports audiences unfamiliar with its demands. Medals were contested in men’s sprint, women’s sprint, and a mixed-gender relay.

Eight new events were introduced to the program in total, including Women’s Doubles in luge, Women’s Large Hill in ski jumping, a Mixed Team event in skeleton, Men’s and Women’s Dual Moguls in freestyle skiing, and a Team Combined event in alpine skiing. Milano Cortina 2026 was also the most gender-balanced Winter Games in history, with the share of female athlete quota places rising to over 47 percent — up from 45.4 percent at the Beijing 2022 Games — and a record 50 women’s events on the schedule.

Italy itself provided an unforgettable host environment. Stadio San Siro — one of the world’s most iconic football stadiums and home to both AC Milan and Inter Milan — hosted the Opening Ceremony on February 6, while the Verona Arena, a Roman amphitheater built in the first century CE, provided one of the most visually dramatic Closing Ceremony settings in Olympic history on February 22. For the first time in Games history, two Olympic cauldrons were lit simultaneously — one in Milan, one in Cortina d’Ampezzo — a symbolic gesture acknowledging the dual-city nature of the host.

Notable American competitors included Mikaela Shiffrin, who further cemented her status among the all-time greats of alpine skiing, and Ilia Malinin, whose presence in figure skating had already redefined expectations for the sport’s technical ceiling before the Games began. Elsewhere, Breezy Johnson claimed the United States’ first gold medal of the Games in women’s downhill, becoming only the second American woman after Lindsey Vonn to win that event. Brazil’s Lucas Pinheiro Braathen made history on February 14 when he claimed gold in men’s alpine skiing giant slalom, delivering his country’s first-ever Winter Olympic medal and the first for any South American nation.

The Paralympic Winter Games: How to Keep Watching Through March 15

For fans whose appetite was not satisfied by the Olympic competition, the Paralympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 provide a natural continuation of the action. Running from March 6 through March 15, the Paralympics feature approximately 665 athletes competing in 79 medal events across six sports: Para alpine skiing, Para biathlon, Para cross-country skiing, Para ice hockey, Para snowboard, and wheelchair curling.

The Paralympic Opening Ceremony on March 6 was held at the Arena di Verona — making it the first-ever Paralympic Ceremony to take place in a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The event, guided by the theme “Life in Motion,” was directed by Italian creative Alfredo Accatino and combined artistic performance with a message about the intertwined nature of sport, society, and inclusion. Coverage of the Opening Ceremony aired live on USA Network at 2 p.m. ET, with a replay broadcast in NBC primetime on March 7.

Ongoing Paralympic competition is streaming on Peacock and NBC Olympics platforms, with USA Network carrying select events and medal sessions. The Games will close at the Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium on March 15 — the same venue that hosted the Opening Ceremony of the 1956 Winter Olympics, closing a circle that connects Cortina’s long Olympic history. Media rights holders confirmed Paralympic coverage is available in a record 126 countries, reflecting the IPC’s accelerating push to give the Games the global broadcast footprint long overdue for one of sport’s most compelling competitions.

Together, the Olympic and Paralympic Games of 2026 represent a transformative moment for winter sports broadcasting — one defined not by a single network or a single platform, but by a genuinely multi-channel, multi-device media ecosystem that met fans wherever they happened to be. Whether on a couch watching NBC prime time, on a phone scrolling TikTok highlights at midnight, or streaming live biathlon from the Anterselva arena on a tablet, the 2026 Winter Games were accessible in ways no previous Winter Olympics had managed to achieve.