The first international seminar on Milan Cortina 2026 will be held Tuesday the 10th and Wednesday the 11th in Milan. The event is organised by the International Olympic Committee in collaboration with CONI, the Special Olympics Committee and the territorial Bodies involved in the project. It will be two days of meetings, debates and presentations that will be structured through an articulated programme which will involve all the main protagonists of the winning project which brought the Olympic Games to Italy, with the appointment that took place on 24 June in Losanna.

Representing the IOC will be the Finnish chairman of the Coordination Commission, Sari Essayah, making her début in Italy in this new role. She will be accompanied by the IOC Director for the Olympic Games, Christophe Dubi. Italian multiple Olympic sport shooting champion Niccolò Campriani was also in the Losanna delegation. After retiring from sports, he became an official for the Sports Department in Losanna. Representing Milan Cortina 2026 will be CONI president, Giovanni Malagò, CIP president, Luca Pancalli, the mayors of Milan and Cortina, Giuseppe Sala and Gianpietro Ghedina, Presidents of the Lombardy and Veneto Regions, Attilio Fontana and Luca Zaia and Presidents of the Trento and Bolzano Provinces, Maurizio Fugatti and Arno Kompatscher.

The speakers will include Olympic champions such as Arianna Fontana, Gabriella Paruzzi, Armin Zoeggeler, Antonio Rossi and Diana Bianchedi, as well as special Olympics athletes such as Francesca Porcellato and athletes of the calibre of Giorgio Rocca. Taking their turns on the stage will also be CONI General Secretary Carlo Mornati, the president of Fondazione Cortina 2021, Alessandro Benetton, whereas the new CEO of Milan Cortina, Vincenzo Novari, will be making his début. Representing the Ministry of Sport will be Giovanni Panebianco, Ministry Chief of Staff.

There will be a welcome cocktail ahead of the two days on Monday evening, 9 December, organised by the IOC at Base, a modern location under the sign of sustainability, created inside the former Ansaldo, which represents one of the most important urban regeneration projects in Europe and which confirms Milan’s role as one of the great capitals of creative production. The evening will be accompanied by a concert by Ensemble Musica Instrumentalis, an all-strings ensemble created in Milan in 2017 with young musicians from all over Europe, directed by twenty-two-year-old orchestra director Giacomo Mutigli, while the menu for the guests will be entrusted to two renowned chefs, Davide Oldani of Milan and Graziano Prest of Cortina. It will be a magnificent, five-ring evening.