History
From Olympia to Milan: The 2026 Flame's 12,000 km Journey
Sixty-three days, 110 provinces, 10,001 torchbearers
February 5, 20264 min read
Follow Along
Relay news and campaign updates by email.
The flame for Milano Cortina 2026 was kindled at Olympia on November 26, 2025, with a curved mirror and the Greek sun, in the ruins where the ancient Games were held for a thousand years.
Seventy-two days later it arrived at San Siro stadium for the opening ceremony in Milan. In between it covered 12,000 kilometers through every province of Italy, carried by 10,001 torchbearers.
The Lighting at Ancient Olympia
The ritual has barely changed in nine decades: an actress dressed as a high priestess uses a parabolic mirror to focus sunlight until a torch catches. A backup flame is always kindled in the days beforehand, in case clouds cover the sun at the ceremony itself.
From Olympia the flame toured Greece, then passed to the Italian organizers in Athens, the same handover every Games has followed for decades.
Rome, December 6: Italy Takes the Flame
The Italian relay opened on December 6, 2025 with a ceremony at the Stadio dei Marmi in Rome, the stadium ringed by marble statues of athletes.
From Rome, the flame had 63 days to reach Milan, and the organizers used all of them. It was on Italian roads through the whole Christmas season and the dead of winter, through fog in the Po Valley and snow in the mountains.
The Numbers: 60 Stops, 110 Provinces, 10,001 Torchbearers
Every province in Italy, all 110 of them, would see the flame. That meant ferries as well as motorcades, island provinces as well as alpine ones, and small cities that never expect to be on anyone's route. Sixty stage cities hosted the flame overnight, and 10,001 torchbearers carried it forward in short segments, a few hundred meters at a time.
Each of those torchbearers, the retired teacher, the local champion, the kid who beat cancer, held the fire for a few minutes in front of the people who know them. Multiply that by every town square along 12,000 kilometers and you can see why countries fight to host these Games.
The torch they carried was designed by Carlo Ratti Associati: light blue, shaped like a flute, cut from recycled aluminum, refillable, and burning renewable fuel. It had to survive Alpine wind, sea air and two months of Italian winter without going dark.
Venice and Cortina
On January 22, stage 46, the flame reached Venice and crossed the Grand Canal by gondola, passing the Rialto Bridge and the Basilica della Salute into St. Mark's Basin. It was the most photographed hour of the relay.
Four days later, stage 50, the flame climbed into the Dolomites and entered Cortina d'Ampezzo on January 26, seventy years to the day after the town opened the 1956 Winter Games.
Along the way it also passed through Turin, host of Italy's previous Winter Olympics in 2006.
February 6: San Siro
The relay ended at the opening ceremony in Milan on February 6, 2026, where the flame lit two cauldrons at once, a first: one beneath the Arco della Pace in Milan and one in Cortina.
Los Angeles is next. Everything we know about the 50-state relay suggests the flame will pass within reach of most Americans. I am campaigning to carry it through my own streets in Santa Monica.