The Technologies Changing How You’ll Watch the 2026 Winter Olympic Games

During the 2024 Summer Olympics successful Paris, 5G and 4K were the starring technologies disposable to galore viewers. There was immoderate AI, but it was mostly utilized for athletes’ benefit. For the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Games determination volition beryllium much exertion than ever, for some athletes and fans.

Much of that exertion has ne'er been utilized astatine the Games before, says Yiannis Exarchos, the managing manager of Olympic Broadcasting Services and enforcement manager of Olympic Channel Services. The 2 organizations are liable for producing overmuch of the television, radio, and integer coverage, and contented connected Olympics.com. “In Milano Cortina, radical volition person unprecedented experiences,” Exarchos says.

Here’s everything you request to know.

Drone Views of Athlete Performances

One of the large technologies coming to the Milano Cortina Olympics are first-person view, oregon FPV, drones. These radio-controlled craft transmit images from their onboard cameras successful existent clip to “offer dynamic perspectives connected the contention tracks,” Exarchos explains.

This year’s Games volition besides beryllium the archetypal to connection 360-degree real-time replay. Offered arsenic portion of a collaboration with Alibaba, the strategy uses multi-camera replay systems and stoboscopic investigation to ofter multi-angle views, frost frames, and slow-motion images of athlete’s unthinkable moves.

Another archetypal is simply a caller tracking strategy for curling stones. “It volition beryllium imaginable to presumption the path, speed, and rotation of each chromatic successful existent time,” Exarchos explains. Suspended obstruction cameras and ice-level views volition assistance viewers recognize the crippled better, arsenic volition elaborate chromatic trajectory graphics and real-time data.

The Olympics’ New AI Tool: Olympic GPT

Got a question astir this year’s Games? Olympic GPT is present to help. The bot specializes successful producing contented for the Olympics.com website. It’ll connection real-time results and accusation connected athletics regulations, and, for the archetypal time, volition person the quality to interact with questions astir the results of ongoing competitions.

“Artificial-intelligence-based nonfiction summaries connected Olympics.com volition springiness fans a speedy and wide overview,” Exarchos says. “They item cardinal points to assistance users determine what to research further, portion besides improving accessibility and speechmaking from mobile devices.”

Virtual Video Production

For the 2026 Winter Olympic Games, a batch of the video accumulation volition beryllium moving to the cloud. Virtual extracurricular broadcasting (OB) vans volition assistance decentralize the process of getting images from events to fans’ screens. Using virtual unreality infrastructure, organizers say, helps trim vigor depletion by immoderate 50 percent and enables distant accumulation for events similar curling and velocity skating.

Everything volition beryllium managed done an wholly cloud-based maestro power country precocious tested astatine the Dakar Rally successful Saudi Arabia successful January. There, abstraction savings were 75 percent implicit the erstwhile championship, portion vigor depletion was reduced by 65 percent.

The Olympics’ Big Data Moment

For this winter’s Games, Olympic Broadcasting Services is besides investigating an automated statement level to assistance teams negociate the immense measurement of video coming successful unrecorded during their events. “Artificial quality breaks down broadcasts into searchable clips, suggests changeable descriptions and keywords, and helps users rapidly find highlights, making storytelling faster and easier,” says Exarchos. AI volition past analyse real-time postulation spikes connected Olympics.com and place the astir invaluable moments for fans.

This communicative primitively appeared in WIRED Italia. It has been translated from Italian.