Roaring Game dominates 2026 Olympic schedule
Once again, curling owns the playing schedule at the upcoming Milano-Cortina Olympic Winter Games.
The organizing committee for the 2026 Games published their competition schedule this week, and if you like curling, it’s great news.
The first thing to understand is how the Olympic spectacle numbers their days of activity.
“Day Zero” is always the day of the Opening Ceremony (“the OC” in Olympic jargon). Then, days one, two, three and so on represent “competition days” that take place after the Opening Ceremony.
Historically speaking, “Day Zero” or Opening Ceremony day hasn’t seen a lot of actual competition happening. This was to allow as many athletes as possible to participate in the OC.
So far, so good. Milano-Cortina 2026 will have Opening Ceremonies on Day Zero (Friday, February 6, 2026) and then will have competition Days 1 through Day 16 following that (Saturday Feb. 7 to Sunday, Feb. 22).
Day 16, the final day, will also host the Closing Ceremony.
Sounds like 16 days of competition, right?
Not so fast.
As more sports and disciplines within those sports have filled the Winter Olympic program (hello Mixed Doubles curling, mixed team Ski Jumping, Ski Mountaineering, etc.) it was apparent that 16 competition days simply wasn’t going to be enough.
The first place to create competition time is on Day Zero—the day of the Opening Ceremony. So in addition to the OC, some competitions also occur on Day Zero. So now we have 17 competition days.
But that was still not enough. To accommodate this, Olympic competitions now start before the Opening Ceremony. Two days before, in fact.
In Olympics jargon these are referred to as “Day –2” and “Day –1”. It creates the slightly weird situation where a dignitary at the Opening Ceremonies may light the flame and declare the Winter Olympics “open” when in fact competition has already been happening for a couple of days.
This offers a total of 19 competition days for Milano-Cortina 2026. It all starts on Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026 (“Day –2”) and finishes on Sunday, Feb. 22 (“Day 16”).
Curling is the only sport on the entire Winter Olympic programme that has competitions occurring on every one of those 19 days. This is now why broadcasters often refer to curling as the “backbone” of the Winter Olympics.
If other events are delayed or postponed due to weather conditions—as happened numerous times during Nagano 1998, for example—there will always be curling content available.
Day –2 (Feb. 4) belongs to curling and curling alone. The only competition that day is the opening draw of Mixed Doubles curling, which will be an evening draw.
This a great opportunity to showcase Mixed Doubles. Not only because it is the only sport active on that first day, but Italy comes into the competition as the defending Olympic champions from Beijing 2022 (Stefania Constantini and Amos Mosaner).
Hopefully the spectators in Cortina d’Ampezzo, located some 400 kilometres from Milan, are there in numbers and in enthusiasm to support their team to a possible gold medal repeat.
The MD competition continues on Day –1 (Feb. 5) with a three-draw day. On Opening Ceremony day (Feb. 6) there will be two draws of MD competition. Feb. 7 and 8 returns to three-draw days, while Feb. 9 sees the final round-robin game of MD competition, and also the semfinal matches in the evening.
On Tuesday, Feb. 10 (Day 4), we’ll enjoy the medal games to conclude the Mixed Doubles discipline.
On Day 5 (Wednesday, Feb. 11) the program switches over to Men’s and Women’s Team (four-player) curling. It gets underway with a single evening draw, Men’s round-robin session one, on Feb. 11.
From Feb. 12 through 18, curling is heavy with seven consecutive three-draw days, alternating between Men’s and Women’s events.
The last Thursday of the Games, Feb. 19, is a huge day. It marks the final round-robin games for both the Men and Women fours and, in the evening draw, the Men’s semofinal takes place.
Friday, Feb. 20 sees the Women’s semifinal in the afternoon draw, while the evening will host the Men’s Bronze Medal match.
On Saturday, Feb. 21, the afternoon draw will deliver the Women’s Bronze Medal match, while the final evening session will reveal the Men’s Gold Medal champions.
And on the final day of Milano-Cortina 2026 (Sunday, Feb. 22) the Women’s Gold Medal game will be played with a late morning draw start time. That curling match will be one of only four events being held on that final day, all of them Gold Medal events (alongside Men’s Hockey, Men’s Four-Man Bobsleigh and the Women’s 50K Cross Country Mass Start)—making curling part of a true Olympic finale.
This curling playing schedule and format was used successfully at the Beijing 2022 Olympics. It provides an incredibly good showcase for Mixed Doubles—it kicks off the Games, and it is well underway when the Opening Ceremonies arrive.
The Women’s Gold Medal game in Cortina provides a glittering bookend for curling at the end of the Olympics; the third consecutive time the competition ends with a women’s final as opposed to a men’s finale.
For North American fans, there will be a six-hour time difference from Cortina’s Central European Time to Eastern Time, and a nine-hour time difference to Pacific Time.
The Winter Olympics is indisputably the pinnacle event of the sport of curling. The playing schedule for Milano-Cortina 2026 gives our sport an incredible global platform for nearly three weeks.
It should be, well, fantastico.