The 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympic Games kicked off to a solid ratings start with its opening ceremony reaching seeing a 34% uptick from the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. The opening ceremony, which kicked off at 11 a.

NBCUniversal’s coverage of the Milan Cortina Olympics’ flashy opening ceremony averaged 21.4 million viewers on NBC and Peacock, a jump of 34% from the opening for the 2022 winter games in Beijing, per preliminary data from Nielsen and digital data from Adobe Analytics.

Get the latest news on the Milan Cortina Olympics. The opening ceremony kicked off the 2026 Winter Games on Friday, Feb. 6.

Luciano Pavarotti, the Italian opera singer, previously sang the song during his final public performance at the 2006 Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Turin. Because of his health issues, the song was pre-recorded and lip-synced.

Milan's San Siro Stadium played the role of primary host. But, in the spirit of these unusually widespread Games, simultaneous celebrations were also held in the clusters of Livigno, Predazzo and Cortina d'Ampezzo, which — for the first time ever — lit a second Olympic cauldron.

Greece, as always, will be the first country introduced in the Parade of Nations for the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics.

Featuring planned tributes to da Vinci, Dante and other symbols of Italian culture, plus an appearance by Mariah Carey, a four-site, dual-cauldron opening ceremony kicked off the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.

Milan Cortina's painfully long, inevitably uneven event was, at its best, a celebration of humanity