An Olympic torch has to keep a flame alive outdoors in the hands of thousands of strangers. The Milano Cortina 2026 torch did it for 63 days of Italian winter, from Roman drizzle to Dolomite wind, and arrived at San Siro on February 6 carrying the fire that left Olympia. The design is called Essential.
An Open Burner
Most Olympic torches are shells. The burner, the valve and the fuel canister sit behind sculpted metal, so the flame seems to come from nowhere. Carlo Ratti Associati did the opposite. Essential's open structure leaves the burner visible, so anyone standing close can watch fuel become fire. The studio unveiled it in April 2025 at two events on the same day, the Triennale in Milan and Expo 2025 in Osaka. The object is very plain: a slim, flute-shaped profile finished in reflective light blue, built to serve the flame.
1,060 Grams of Recycled Metal
Essential weighs 1,060 grams before fuel and is made in Italy from recycled aluminum and brass alloy. The engineering came from Cavagna Group, an Italian firm that has spent decades building gas-control equipment, which is the resume you want behind a valve that cannot fail on live television.
Rio 2016's torch ran between 1 and 1.5 kilograms. A few hundred grams matters when the torch goes to people of every age and build, some of whom will hold it overhead at a jog for several minutes.
Refuel and Reuse
Essential is modular: it takes a fresh fuel canister and goes back to work, up to ten uses per torch. Past hosts manufactured torches by the thousand because each unit was effectively single-use; Rio 2016 produced roughly 12,000 of them. Milano Cortina's refillable design meant a fraction of the hardware for the same relay.
That breaks with nine decades of practice, and I suspect future hosts will treat it as the baseline. The longer history is in how Olympic torches are designed and built.
The Fuel Started as Cooking Oil
Essential burns bio-LPG produced at the Enilive biorefinery in Gela, Sicily, refined from renewable feedstocks: used cooking oil, animal fats, residues from agriculture. Eni and its chemicals company Versalis developed the fuel side of the program alongside the torch itself.
The flame Italians cheered through 110 provinces was running on recycled frying oil, and nobody watching could tell the difference.
The Route Was the Real Test
December rain in Rome. Salt air over the Venetian lagoon, where the flame crossed the Grand Canal by traditional boat on January 22. Alpine stages through the Valtellina in the last days of January, in full winter.
Behind the runners sat the backup every modern relay carries: the mother flame travels in lanterns alongside them, so a gust can put out a torch without ending the relay. More on that system in why the Olympic flame never goes out.
LA 2028 Flips the Conditions
The next torch gets July instead of February, heat instead of ice, Santa Ana gusts instead of alpine wind, and the longest route ever attempted if the planned 50-state relay holds. Whatever LA28 unveils will likely borrow from Essential: the visible burner, the refillable core, the green fuel. I am campaigning to carry that torch through Santa Monica, so when the design comes out I will read the spec sheet the way other people read box scores. Until then, here is everything we know about the 50-state relay.
