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Cesc Fabregas, Head Coach of Como 1907, holds the Olympic Flame on stage on February 3, 2026 in Como, Italy. The 2026 Winter Olympics opening ceremony is determined for February 6, with the shut of the games to happen on February 22.
Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Photos
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Each and every Olympic Games has a torch. Each and every torch has a designer. For the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, that designer is MIT engineer and architect Carlo Ratti.
A frigid climate sports fanatic, Ratti owns the architectural firm Carlo Ratti Associati and is at the origin from Turin, Italy—which hosted the Winter Games in 2006. His firm’s work has been featured at rather a pair of global expositions, collectively with the French Pavilion at the Osaka Expo (World’s Shapely) in 2025. The Cloud, a 400-foot great spherical structure, became as soon as also a finalist for a particular commentary deck at the 2012 Olympic Games in London.
Olympic organizers invited Ratti to produce this one year’s torch, and he frail loads of of his instructing principles when forthcoming the mission.
“It’s about what the thing or the produce is to bring,” Ratti stated in an announcement. “The design it’s a ways going to touch folks, how it’s a ways going to explain to folks, how it’s a ways going to transmit emotions. That’s the excellent thing.”
“Significant” became as soon as designed to produce no matter the climate, wind, or altitude it would possibly per chance maybe maybe bump into on its budge from Olympia to Milan. The torch “objectives to combine both previous and future,” says designer Carlo Ratti, a professor of the practice at MIT who hails from Turin, Italy.
Image: Photo courtesy of Milano Cortina 2026.
The reliable title for the 2026 Winter Olympic torch is “Significant.” Importantly, it became as soon as constructed to work no matter the climate, wind, or altitude the torch would bump into on its over 7,000-mile-long budge from Olympia, Greece to Milan, Italy. In complete, the produce job took three years to complete with collaboration from loads of researchers and engineers.
“Each and every produce pushed the boundaries in more than just a few directions, nonetheless all of them with the most important thought to set up the flame at the center,” stated Ratti, collectively with that he wished the torch to embody “an ethos of frugality.”
Significant | The Torch of Milano Cortina 2026 | Making Of
Credit score: Milano Cortina 2026
As for the ever crucial flame, a high-efficiency burner powered by bio-GPL constituted of 100 percent renewable feedstocks by vitality firm ENI is at the core of the torch. Previously, the torches had been entirely frail as soon as, nonetheless “Significant” can even be recharged 10 times so fewer torches desired to be constructed.
“Significant” also boasts a peculiar internal mechanism that can even be seen thru a vertical opening along its facet. This system that audiences can see internal and look the burner in action. From a produce perspective, that boosts Ratti’s desire to retain the emphasis on the flame itself and not the thing.
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At ideal below 2.5 kilos, “Significant” is the lightest torch created for the Olympics and is essentially constituted of recycled aluminum. The physique is carried out with a PVD coating that is heat resistant. This particular cease permits the torch to shift colours by reflecting the environments it’s a ways carried thru, whether or not that be Milan’s lustrous metropolis lights or the peaks of the Dolomites.
The Olympic torch is a blue-inexperienced color, and the Paralympic torch is gold. It also won an honorable level out in Italy’s most prestigious industrial produce award, the Compasso d’Oro.
Professor of the practice Carlo Ratti with his produce: the 2026 Winter Olympic Torch. Image: Photo courtesy of Milano Cortina 2026.
For the length of the job, the flame became as soon as the most foremost facet of the torch. The flame became as soon as notion to be sacred in frail Greece and this would possibly per chance occasionally cease lit all thru the complete 16 days of competition.
A routine image in both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, the torch will get consideration long before the well-known puck descend or downhill scuttle. Its budge for the 2026 Olympics began in wearisome November and can amassed dangle covered all 110 Italian provinces before it arrives in Milan in time for the outlet ceremony on February 6. Ratti carried the torch for a share of its budge thru Turin in January. He hopes that the torch and games showcase the Italy of recently and of the future.
Ratti carried the torch he designed thru the streets of Turin, Italy in January. Image: Photo courtesy of Milano Cortina 2026.
“When folks take into chronicle Italy, and they take into chronicle the previous, from frail Romans to the Renaissance or Baroque length,” he stated. “Italy does certainly dangle a well-known previous. However the actuality is that it can be the second-excellent industrial powerhouse in Europe and is leading in innovation and tech in many fields. So, the 2026 torch objectives to combine both previous and future. It attracts on Italian produce from the previous, nonetheless also on future-forward technologies.”
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