Winter Olympics 2026: Opening Ceremony Breaks Records

The Night Mariah Carey Sang in Italian, and San Siro Fell Silent

Nobody told Mariah Carey she was supposed to perform in English. When the lights dimmed at San Siro on the evening of February 6, 2026, and the spotlight settled on one of the most recognisable voices in American music, the 61,000-strong crowd inside the stadium expected a pop performance. What they got was Mariah Carey singing "Nel Blu Dipinto di Blu", Volare, entirely in Italian, for the first time in her career. When she finished and moved into "Nothing Is Impossible," the stadium answered with a sound that had nothing to do with expectation and everything to do with surprise. That moment, more than almost any other across the 3 hours and 29 minutes of the opening ceremony of the XXV Winter Olympic Games Milano Cortina 2026, crystallised what this night was trying to be. Italy showing the world what it means when a country decides to open the biggest sporting event on the planet by leading with beauty.

It worked. According to preliminary data from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, the opening ceremony drew 21.4 million viewers across NBC and Peacock in the United States alone, a 34 percent increase from the 15.9 million who watched the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics open. On Peacock alone, more than 3 million people tuned in on average, making it the most streamed opening ceremony in the history of the Winter Games. By the end of Day 1, NBCUniversal reported 700 million minutes of Olympic content streamed across its platforms, 2.5 times more than the comparable period in Beijing. The final Games tally: 12.9 billion minutes streamed, a figure 87 percent higher than all prior Winter Games combined. For a ceremony produced by Marco Balich at Banijay Live's Balich Wonder Studio, under the theme "Armonia", Italian for harmony, from the Ancient Greek for "bringing together", these were numbers that matched the ambition of the show itself.

Four Locations, Two Cauldrons: A Ceremony That Broke the Template

Every Winter Olympics opening ceremony happens in one place. One stadium, one stage, one cauldron. Milano Cortina 2026 changed that entirely. For the first time in Olympic history, the ceremony unfolded simultaneously across four locations: San Siro Stadium in Milan as the primary venue, and satellite events at the Predazzo Ski Jumping Stadium, Livigno Snow Park, and Cortina d'Ampezzo, where mountain athletes paraded through the town center rather than a distant stadium. At one point, the first five nations in the Parade of Nations had zero representatives at San Siro, they were all at the Alpine venues, marching through mountain air in real time, broadcast simultaneously on screen. Italy's flag bearers Federica Brignone and Amos Mosaner paraded through Cortina's streets, Brignone carried on Mosaner's shoulders, she admitted afterward she had asked him if he was sure he could manage the weight.

The night concluded with the second historic first: two Olympic cauldrons lit in two different cities, simultaneously, for the first time in Olympic history. At the Arco della Pace in Milan, legendary Italian Alpine ski racers Alberto Tomba and Deborah Compagnoni lit the first cauldron. Four hundred kilometres away at Piazza Angelo Dibona in the heart of Cortina d'Ampezzo, current skiing star Sofia Goggia, still competing in these Games, received the torch and lit the second. The cauldrons themselves, designed with inspiration from Leonardo da Vinci's famous geometric knot studies, were made of aeronautical aluminium and designed to expand and contract like a living object. Both flames burned simultaneously in perfect synchrony for the duration of the Games. The Olympic torch had travelled 63 days to reach them: lit in Olympia, Greece, carried by 10,001 torchbearers through all 110 provinces of Italy and every UNESCO World Heritage Site in the country before arriving at San Siro on February 6.

An Italian Celebration in Every Direction: The Artistic Programme

The artistic programme inside San Siro was conceived as a living museum of Italian civilisation. The ceremony opened with a video countdown showcasing images of Milan and Cortina before dancers dressed as angels took the stage in a tribute to Neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova. From there, the show moved through Italian history as if flicking through the pages of the most colourful book ever written: actors in giant bobblehead masks of composers Rossini, Verdi and Puccini; dancers as Roman soldiers and Coliseum architecture; a tribute to Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" through black-and-white cinematics; suspended tubes of blue, yellow and red paint that spilled colour across the stage as a metaphor for Italian artistic genius; a Symphony of Fantasia conducted by actress and singer Matilda De Angelis that moved from Nino Rota film scores to Vivaldi arias to the pop of the late Raffaella Carrà.

Italian actress Sabrina Impacciatore, known internationally from HBO's "The White Lotus", performed on stage. Actor and producer Pierfrancesco Favino recited an original poem. Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti appeared in a segment showing a young girl a model of the solar system, the ceremony's gesture toward science and the future. The Italian tricolour was carried into the arena by models wearing the late Giorgio Armani's final designs, green, white, and red, in a moving tribute to the fashion legend, who died at 91 in September 2025. Armani is also the official technical outfitter of Italy's Olympic athletes. IOC President Kirsty Coventry, the first woman ever to lead the International Olympic Committee, addressed viewers with the ceremony's guiding message: "Let these Games be a celebration of what unites us, and of everything that makes us human." Italian President Sergio Mattarella then formally declared the XXV Olympic Winter Games open.

Bocelli, Carey, Pausini: The Music That Defined the Night

The ceremony's musical arc moved from Carey's unexpected Italian-language opening to the moment that preceded the cauldron lighting: Andrea Bocelli, the legendary Italian tenor, stepping to centre stage between rows of violinists to sing "Nessun Dorma", the closing aria from Puccini's opera Turandot, its famous final line "Vincerò!" (I will win) echoing through San Siro in a moment that sent what observers described as a collective shiver through the stadium. The Olympic flag was then raised in both Milan and Cortina simultaneously as pianist Lang Lang, mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, and the Teatro alla Scala Children's Choir performed the Olympic Anthem.

Laura Pausini, one of Italy's most beloved singer-songwriters, sang the national anthem, "Il Canto degli Italiani," inside San Siro. Simultaneously, a mountain choir sang the same anthem in Cortina d'Ampezzo. Rapper Ghali also performed. The Olympic Oath was read at Piazza Angelo Dibona in Cortina by Italian curler Stefania Constantini and luger Dominik Fischnaller, representing athletes, coaches, and judges. South African actress Charlize Theron delivered a message of peace drawing from the words of Nelson Mandela. Carey, who performed without a fee (as is customary at Olympic ceremonies), posted on Instagram afterward: "Such a dream come true to perform in Italian at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony. Thank you to everyone who made this happen. Nothing Is Impossible!" The ceremony required 1,200 volunteer performers in over 1,400 costumes, following nearly 700 hours of collective rehearsal. Ticket prices reached $2,300 USD for premium seats.

The Viewership Story: Olympics Are Back

The numbers that followed the ceremony told a story that extended well beyond a single night. The 21.4 million US viewers for the opening was a good starting point. Through Day 4 of the Games, NBC was averaging 26.5 million viewers across NBC, Peacock, and NBCUniversal digital platforms, the most-watched Winter Olympics at that point since Sochi 2014. That figure was nearly double the 13.7 million average Beijing achieved over the same period. By Day 13, the Games had posted 20 million viewers or more for 13 consecutive days. Overall average through the Games: 23.9 million viewers. The final streaming total of 12.9 billion minutes was 87 percent higher than all previous Winter Olympics combined.

The IOC's own post-ceremony survey, drawn from a sample across 14 countries including the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, Germany, France, South Africa, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and others, found 90 percent approval among respondents. Seventy percent of international viewers said they considered the opening ceremony the most memorable in the history of the Winter Games. In Italy that number was 73 percent. Eighty-seven percent of international viewers said they felt more motivated to follow the rest of the Games after watching. Among NBC's internal measures, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, which aired immediately after the primetime ceremony broadcast, recorded its most-watched telecast since Thanksgiving with 2.3 million viewers. The RAI commentary broadcast provided the night's unintended comic episode, when director Paolo Petrecca confused actress Matilda De Angelis with Mariah Carey, mistook the IOC President Kirsty Coventry for the Italian President's daughter, and was later criticised for offensive remarks during the athletes' parade. The ceremony itself, however, needed no corrections. It was, by any measure, the Italian opening the world did not know it needed.