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≡ 2026 MEDAL PROJECTIONS ≡
Now that the Olympic Winter Games 2026 medal designs have been revealed, who is going to win them?
The true answer is no one knows just yet, but a clue as to the spread of medals and placings at the Milan Cortina 2026 Games can be taken from compiling the 2025 world championships results in the eight sports and 116 events to be held next year.
So, here it is!
The Sports Examiner reviewed each of the winter-sport worlds held in 2025, compiling the medal winners in 114 of the 116 events held (can you guess two that weren’t; check the end of the story). The compilation showed that 25 countries won the 342 medals in 2026 Winter Olympic events, shown in order of total medals (gold-silver-bronze):
● 41 ~ 17-13-11: Norway
● 35 ~ 8-15-12: Germany
● 33 ~ 15-10-8: United States
● 31 ~ 12-9-10: Switzerland
● 27 ~ 9-9-9: Canada
● 22 ~ 4-10-8: Japan
● 21 ~ 9-5-7: Netherlands
● 18 ~ 8-4-6: France
● 17 ~ 8-6-3: Italy
● 16 ~ 7-3-6: Sweden
● 16 ~ 3-7-6: Austria
● 9 ~ 3-4-2: Great Britain
● 8 ~ 0-4-4: China
● 7 ~ 1-1-5: South Korea
● 7 ~ 0-3-4: Finland
● 6 ~ 1-2-3: Czech Rep.
● 6 ~ 0-2-4: Poland
● 4 ~ 3-1-0: New Zealand
● 4 ~ 3-1-0: Slovenia
● 4 ~ 1-1-2: Australia
● 3 ~ 1-1-1: Belgium
● 3 ~ 0-2-1: Kazakhstan
● 2 ~ 1-1-0: Spain
● 1 ~ 0-1-0: Latvia
● 1 ~ 0-1-0: Ukraine
Seventeen of these are European countries, with four from Asia and two each from the Americas and Oceania. No Russians or Belarusians are shown in the medal counts and some of them could be in Milan Cortina, depending on the International Olympic Committee’s decision on the issue and the International Federations; that’s a wild card in these results.
There’s a lot of similarity in this list to the results of the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing (CHN), contested during a Covid-19 lockdown:
● 37: Norway
● 27: Germany
● 25: United States
● 18: Sweden
● 18: Austria
In 2018 in PyeongChang (KOR):
● 39: Norway
● 31: Germany
● 29: Canada
● 23: United States
● 20: Netherlands
Beyond the 2025 World Championships medal winners, what about the countries with fourth- and fifth-place finishers this year, right behind the Worlds medalists this year? The U.S. came out well here:
● 32: United States
● 22: Italy
● 18: Canada
● 18: Norway
● 17: Austria
● 17: Switzerland
● 16: France
● 13: Sweden
● 11: Germany
● 9: Japan
● 9: China
Is this what will happen? Of course not. But it offers a backdrop to the competitions to come, and a guide to who will the nations to watch in Italy in 2026.
One more thing: a salute to long-time friend Luciano Barra, the chief operating officer of the Turin 2006 Winter Games organizing committee (among many important posts), who created these compilations in past years.
Rich Perelman
Editor
(What about those events for 2026 for which no Worlds event was held in 2025: the new men’s Team Sprint in Nordic Combined and the new men’s Super Team in Ski Jumping. The Figure Skating Team Event standings – not a Worlds event – were compiled from the scores of the four individual events.)
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