The Winter Olympics can be somewhat indecipherable to casual sport fans — especially in Australia.
But with the Aussie team constantly over-achieving on the World Cup circuit and tipped for one of its most successful Games in history it might be time to start paying attention.
So if you need help telling your moguls from your monobob, your aerials from your alpine, or whether it's feet first or head first in the skeleton, this article is for you.
When do the 2026 Winter Olympics start?
The Winter Olympics will officially start with the opening ceremony on Friday, February 6 local time (Saturday morning AEDT) at the historic San Siro stadium in Milan.
There will be action before the opening ceremony with some mixed curling matches and women's ice hockey preliminaries taking place before the official start of competition.
The Games will run for 16 days and finish on February 22.
What time does the Winter Olympics opening ceremony start in Australia?
The opening ceremony will get underway at 8:00pm, which is 6:00am AEDT.
Moguls skiers Jakara Anthony and Matt Graham are Australia's flag bearers, but they won't be in Milan.
Instead, they'll march at a ceremony in Livigno, one of three hubs at the disparate venue centres which includes Cortina d'Ampezzo and Predazzo.
There will be two Olympic cauldrons for the first time, one at the Arco della Pace in Milan and the other in Piazza Dibona in Cortina.
What is the Winter Olympics schedule?
The official schedule can be found at the official Olympics website.
Where are the 2026 Winter Olympics?
The official title of these Olympics is the Milano-Cortina Games, but in actual fact the Games are taking place in a vast area across northern Italy.
Officially this is the first time the Winter Olympics are being co-hosted by two cities — even if Games have been split between various centres before. The 2022 Games, for example, took place in Beijing and Zhangjiakou.
But this Games is taking things to a whole new level, split across eight different cities across north-east Italy and an area of more than 22,000 square kilometres. That makes the 2026 Games the most widespread Winter Olympics and Winter Paralympics ever.
[MAP]It's created challenges for the organisers.
Alpine skiing, for example, will be divided between Cortina for the women's events and Bormio for the men — which are separated by a five-and-a-half-hour drive.
"It's very complicated due to the big distances and also because of all the different representatives in each region," Milan-Cortina chief executive Andrea Varnier said.
"We have great relationships with everyone but everybody has their own way and style of doing things, so we need to adapt to them.
"That's the spirit of these Games — we adapt to the different territories and not vice versa."
Why are the Games so spread out?
Essentially it boils down to cost and is, in fact, a directive from the International Olympic Committee.
The Milan-Cortina Games are the first Winter Olympics to fully embrace the IOC's new cost-cutting reforms.
It means that existing venues are being used — a grand total of 90 per cent of the venues are existing venues or will be temporary.
What sports are there?
There are 16 sports set to take place across northern Italy over the next couple of weeks.
Australia will have athletes competing in 11 of them with curling, ice hockey, Nordic combined, speed skating and ski jumping the only sports without an Aussie in them.
Alpine skiing
There's four events in the overall discipline of Alpine skiing, split into two main types. There are the speed events of downhill and Super G, and the technical events of giant slalom and slalom.
In all four athletes need to negotiate gates as they make their way down a course, but in the two speed events the gates are spaced further apart with an emphasis on speed.
The technical events tend to be shorter, with the gates much closer together and far more emphasis on skill. Theses shorter events consist of two runs with the times added together.
There are men's and women's team combined events too where two athletes race a downhill and a slalom with the times combined together to get the overall winner.
Fun fact: Alpine skiing has not featured at every Olympics, making its debut in 1936 at the Garmisch-Partenkirchen Games.
Biathlon
Think cross country skiing with guns. Born out of the old military patrol event, athletes ski around a course and then have five shots at a target from either a standing or lying position. Any missed targets mean a penalty lap has to be skied or a minute time penalty is added to the skiers overall time.
There are a variety of different events, for men there's a 20km individual, 10km sprint, 15km mass start and a 12.5km pursuit, plus a 4x7.5km relay.
Women do the same events but over shorter distances: 15km, 7.5km, 12.5km, 10km and a 4x6km relay, respectively. There is also a mixed 4x6km relay event.
Fun fact: Military patrol was an official event in 1924, but biathlon was not added until 1960 (men) and 1992 (women).
Bobsleigh
There are three types of sleds used in bobsleigh racing: Four-man, two-man (or woman) and monobob.
The four-man has, unsurprisingly, four men in it, while the two-man/two-woman events have two.
Monobob is a smaller, one-person sled.
Fun fact: The bobsled track in Cortina featured in the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only.
Cross country skiing
Long distance, lung-busting and gut-wrenching skiing both up and down hills.
The sport is split into classical and freestyle techniques. Classical is where skiers have to slide in tracks in the snow, while freestyle is where skiers skate across virgin snow with angled skis.
There are lots of different events: 10x10km skiathlon (classical for the first 10km, then freestyle for the second), 10km freestyle interval start, 50km mass start classical, and sprint classical.
Fun fact: This is the oldest form of ski racing with the first recorded race taking place in 1842.
Curling
It's lawn bowls on ice where teams slide large granite blocks towards a target in the ice.
There are 10 ends, with each team curling eight stones each per end.
There are men's, women's and mixed team events.
Fun fact: Curling was first played in Scotland with the oldest club, Kilsyth Curling Club, started in 1716.
Figure skating
Some of the most beautiful and graceful events at the Games. Skaters compete either as individuals or pairs in figure skating, which features leaps and throws and spins.
Then there's ice dancing, which has no lifts or throws and is choreographed in time to music.
Fun fact: Swedish figure skater Gillis Grafström is the only man to have won gold medals in the Summer and Winter Olympics in the same sport. Figure skating took place in the Summer Games in Antwerp before becoming a Winter Olympic staple.
Freestyle skiing
Australia's best historical chance at winning medals has come in freestyle skiing.
There are a number of different formats within the sport with Australia enjoying most success in aerials and moguls skiing.
There are also park and pipe disciples of halfpipe — where teenager Indra Brown will compete — slopestyle or big air and the high-octane events of ski cross.
Fun fact: Australia has won five total medals in aerials skiing, the most of any discipline at the Winter Olympics
Ice hockey
Physical, fast, frenetic and, for the first time since 2014, featuring the best players on the planet with NHL players heading to the Olympics.
There are men's and women's competitions set to take place at these Games.
Fun fact: Ice hockey took place for the first time at the 1920 Summer Olympics but only because the Palais de Glace in Antwerp refused to host Olympic figure skating without it.
Luge
This is the feet-first one. Athletes slide down the same icy track that the bobsleigh drivers negotiate on what amounts to a tea tray, hitting extraordinary speeds.
Incredibly, there is a doubles event where one slider lies on top of the other.
Fun fact: Three-time Olympic champion, German legend Georg Hackl, and the first man to win a medal at five consecutive Winter Olympics, has an unusual other skill. He is a nine-time wok racing world champion.
Nordic combined
A mix of two vastly different sports requiring the explosive power of ski jumping and the brutal endurance of cross country skiing.
Athletes jump first, with each point gained in the ski jump equating to a time gap for the subsequent cross country race in a system known as the Gundersen Method.
(Not so) Fun fact: This sport remains the only sport in the Olympics that does not have a women's competition.
Short track speed skating
Skaters come together in heats of five skaters each and slide around a tight oval track 111.12 metres long at high speeds in close proximity to each other. Expect full contact and crashes a-plenty.
There are men's and women's 500m, 1,000m and 1,500m races, a women's 3,000m relay and a men's 5,000m relay. There is also a mixed relay.
Fun fact: Australia has Steven Bradbury, Italy has Arianna Fontana. The Italian legend has 11 Winter Olympic medals (2 gold, 4 silver and 5 bronze) meaning she has won more than 70 per cent of all medals won by Italian athletes at the Winter Olympic Games.
Skeleton
Exactly like luge, only with athletes sliding down on their belly, face first.
Athletes can get to 130-140km/h down the track while experiencing forces of up to 5G.
Fun fact: The first two times the event appeared in the Winter Olympics it took place in St Moritz down the infamous Cresta Run. The Cresta Run is famous for being a half-pipe so if sledders lose control they can throw themselves out of the track — which sounds about as safety conscious as the sport as a whole.
Ski jumping
There are two types of hill, the normal hill where skiers can expect to leap 90-odd metres through the air, and the large hill where that distance is closer to 140 metres. Ski flying, where skiers can fly as far as 240 metres in one leap is not at the Olympics.
Fun fact: Brother and sister Domen and Nika Prevc both claimed victory in ski jumping's biggest tournament outside the Olympics this year.
Ski mountaineering
This is a new sport for this Games where athletes have to climb up a mountain using skis before sliding back down another one.
There are two events, a knockout sprint for men and women, plus a mixed relay.
Fun fact: The first ever skimo world championships took place in 2002.
Snowboard
You'll mostly be thinking of halfpipe, slopestyle and big air competitions in snowboard, but don't forget the snowboard cross event where four riders at a time negotiate a course, or the parallel giant slalom.
Fun fact: Ross Rebagliati won the first ever snowboard gold for Canada at the 1998 Nagano Games in the giant slalom event but was briefly stripped of the title for testing positive for cannabis. However, cannabis had not been officially banned by the IOC at that time and therefore it had no authority to strip the medal, a court ruled.
Speed skating
On a 400m-long oval track skaters slide one at a time and race against the clock in a graceful exhibition of speed on glassy ice.
There are a variety of events: 500m, 1,000m, 1,500m for men and women, 3,000m and 5,000m for women and 5,000m and 10,000m for men. There is also a mass start event for both men and women, and a team pursuit too.
Fun fact: At the 1928 Olympics the 10,000m was cancelled half way through due to a sudden thaw that melted the ice on the outdoor rink. No medal was awarded.
Are there any new sports?
Just one, with ski mountaineering, or skimo, making its bow.
Skimo is a new discipline that features both an ascent and a descent.
The ascent takes place with skis on, before they are removed and placed in a backpack to negotiate some stairs carved into the snow.
The skis have what are called skins on the bottom of them to allow them to grip the snow better.
The final section of the race involves a downhill aspect where skiers remove the skins from the bottom of the skis and then use them conventionally to get to the bottom of a hill.
Each heat normally takes about three or four minutes.
How many Australians are competing?
Australia has named a 53-strong team for this Winter Olympics, its second-largest ever for a Winter Games.
It could be Australia's most successful too.
Never before has an Australia team won more than four medals at a single Games, but with Australian athletes winning 26 medals at World Cup level across seven different sporting disciplines you'd be crazy to bet against them making this a great Games in the Italian Alps.
How can I watch the Winter Olympics in Australia?
Channel Nine has exclusive rights for the Winter Olympic Games so the only place you can watch them will be on Nine or subsidiary channels NineNow or Stan Sport online.
ABC Sport will be running a live blog every night of the Games.
