Winter Wonderland All the tech at Olympics Milano Cortina

IBC

First-Person-View drones, expanded real-time 360-degree replays, stroboscopic replays, dynamic graphics, cinematic cameras and a massive virtualized production setup make Milano Cortina 2026 a major step forward in immersive, scalable and sustainable Olympic broadcasting.

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“We are not tech narcissists,” insists Yiannis Exarchos, CEO, Olympic Broadcasting Services. “We have a team which is fully immersed in technology but we always need to remember that this is about telling the stories of the most important athletes in the world and the values and the emotions that are being generated by them.”

Nonetheless, the OBS which has responsibility for delivering official coverage across successive Games, continues to unleash an arsenal of technologies that meet the expectations of its media rights holders (MRH) and to reach as many demographics as possible with a huge variety of types of content and formats.

At the Winter Games in Italy next month this includes an expansion in the use of IP related systems to produce and distribute 6500 hours of coverage. 5600 hours of that is non-competition coverage and includes VR and vertical video for mobile phones as well as behind the scenes material. AI is helping automating highlights creation for rights holders to tailor content and a bespoke new language model ‘Olympic GPT’ is being debuted for use by anyone to quiz Olympic content and search results on the IOC website.

Distributed venues

The biggest challenge for Milano Cortina is the distributed nature of the main venues which seems unprecedented. Milan is the base for less than half the athletes with others based in the mountains to the North at Cortina, Livigno and Tesero. Connectivity is notoriously patchy in the Dolomites and one of OBS’ most important jobs, partnering with Telecom Italia, was to secure capacity. Even then physical transport between site is not practical, meaning many broadcasters and stakeholder like FIS, the international ski federation, have to double up their presence.

It also means the opening ceremony featuring performances from Mariah Carey and Andrea Bocelli is distributed geographically.  The absence of ‘clusterisation’ - putting many venues together – “does create significant operational challenges and also additional costs,” Exarchos admitted. “And in Milano Cortina people cannot easily move from one site to another. Despite having teams of athletes in all four locations we want to have a sense of unity, especially in the parade of nations. We want them to feel that they are parading together at the same time. We did a very detailed rehearsal a couple of months ago that went very well and I believe that because of the size of these places, their incredible beauty and the tradition that exists locally, the atmosphere is going be fantastic.”

Thousands of hours of coverage

OBS will provide 6,500+ hours to MRHs of which 900+hours are dedicated to live action and 5,600+ hours for additional content.  With Samsung, OBS will broadcast to mobile using a feed filmed on mobile phones.

Unlike other major sports events like Uefa Champions League, the Olympics continues to capture in 4K UHD HDR “reflecting the industry’s growing adoption of higher-resolution and high dynamic range workflows,” it says. Down-scalers will convert content to 1080p HD 50, ensuring compatibility with HD broadcasters while supporting the transition to UHD HDR.

8K production will be implemented for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, as well as for figure skating and short track speed skating, in partnership with CMG.  In addition, OBS has deployed an 8K theatre at the IBC, enabling broadcasters and partners to experience content at the highest resolution.

 

Key components of the virtual production

OBS production for Milano Cortina is significantly more virtualised and remote than at any previous Olympics, representing a clear evolution in the delivery of live sports coverage.

“MC26 marks a turning point in Olympic broadcasting, cloud integration and remote production,” says Isidoro Moreno, OBS Head of Engineering. “At these Games, software-defined broadcasting (SBD) is driving the shift towards the virtualisation of core OBS operations. This approach creates a reimagined broadcast environment where cloud technology, remote workflows, and AI-powered tools work together, transforming how content is captured, managed, and delivered.”

Central to this transformation is the shift away from traditional, hardware-heavy OB vans towards a virtualised OB van (VOB) model built on a private, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) cloud infrastructure. Following a successful proof of concept at curling in Beijing 2022, this model is now fully deployed at three venues (curling stadium, sliding centre, speed skating stadium) for the Games. The VOBs have led to a reduction in compound space by more than 50%, cutting power consumption by up to 50% in some cases, and enabling full remote production with the same operational capabilities as conventional OB vans.

OBS is also introducing fully virtual Technical Operations Centres (TOCs) for the first time at an Olympic Games, replacing on-site technical rooms with remote, dashboard-based operations for signal transmission to the International Broadcast Centre (IBC). The TOCs will be deployed at four venues (both ice hockey venues, and the venues for figure skating/short track speed skating and speed skating)

In parallel, OBS is piloting a fully cloud-based Master Control Room, enabling remote feed switching and management while minimising physical infrastructure and on-site staffing.

The IBC in Milan is a quarter size smaller than in Beijing 2022 with a 33% reduction in power. Building on this experience, the model planned for Dakar 2026 Summer Youth Games is expected to require 75% less rack space and consume 65% less power at OBS HQ, and a 50% faster IBC rollout, with systems operational two months before the Games.

Hundreds of specialist cameras

OBS will deploy more than 810 camera systems across the Games, including a wide range of specialty systems designed to enhance immersion, storytelling and analysis.

POV capture is delivered through multiple solutions. In ski and snowboard cross, goggle cameras are deployed rather than helmet cameras to provide a more natural athlete perspective. Additionally, in partnership with Worldwide TOP Partner Alibaba, OBS produces short-term, on demand VR 360-degree videos from athletes’ perspectives, optimised for social media platforms.

Across outdoor sports, OBS will operate 24 drones, nearly double the number used at Beijing, including 15 First-Person-View drones and nine traditional drones. Making their Olympic Winter Games debut, FPV drones are small and agile, able to follow athletes along the field of play and deliver a thrilling first-person perspective that highlights speed and skill.

OBS will deploy 32 cinematic cameras, first introduced at Paris 2024, to capture key storytelling moments: from athletes arriving and preparing to compete to celebrating victories and behind-the-scenes interactions with crowds and teammates. With a shallow depth of field, these cameras draw focus to human emotion, capturing moments of intensity or joy. Enhanced colour, texture, and detail amplify the emotional impact. New for Milano Cortina 2026, the cameras will also support on-screen graphic overlays such as athlete names.

Replay innovation continues to advance rapidly. A total of 17 AI-powered real-time 360° replay systems, developed in collaboration with Alibaba, will be deployed across 17 sports and disciplines, up from 10 at Beijing 2022, enabling multi angle, frozen frame and slow-motion analysis. In parallel, 12 stroboscopic replay systems, developed with Alibaba and Omega, will be deployed across 15 sports and disciplines, compared with only one system utilised at Beijing. Using AI, these systems highlight key body positions and movement trajectories in a single, easy to follow visual sequence.

Innovative perspectives

In addition, several other sports will feature innovative camera angles:

Curling: An overhead rail camera spans the full length of the sheet, capturing the movement and speed of play. Combined with cameras close to the ice, this setup delivers dynamic angles, immersive replays, and visuals that highlight athlete emotion and the intensity of the competition.

Figure Skating: An on-ice camera operator will capture cinematic close-ups before and after competition routines, as well as full skating performances on the ice during the gala.

Biathlon: AI-driven camera systems allow MRHs to spotlight national athletes, offering personalised, real-time coverage of shooting lanes with live data and split-screen options.

AI-augmented and automated workflows

OBS uses AI to produce highlights at scale, quickly and efficiently, for both OBS and MRHs. A proof-of-concept was completed at Gangwon 2024, and the system was launched at Paris 2024 with 14 sports and disciplines, generating more than 100,000 highlights – a volume impossible manually. At Milano Cortina 2026, the system will be available for all sports. It is fully customisable, allowing highlights to be tailored by length, athletes, sport, nationality, competition parameters, archived content, and even reframing horizontal broadcasts into vertical formats for social platforms.

OBS is testing an Automatic Media Description platform to manage the vast volume of live video. AI breaks broadcasts into searchable clips, suggests shot descriptions and keywords, and helps teams quickly find key moments and highlights, making storytelling faster, more efficient, and easier to scale.

Olympic athletes also have access to AI-driven highlights from their own competitions for dissemination on their own socials which Excharcos calls “a major breakthrough.”

Expanded 5G contribution

For the Opening Ceremony, a private 5G network will be deployed, enabling more than 20 Samsung mobile devices to capture backstage and on-field activity using advanced 5G transmission. Dedicated mobile feeds and vertical video outputs will allow MRHs to share the energy and atmosphere of the event in real time, offering dynamic, social-first coverage.

On-screen graphics advances

Aside from the stroboscopic replay and 360° replay systems key graphic techniques include:

• Live course and position tracking: Tools such as Course Tracker, Position on Course, and Pinning visually follow athletes in real time, showing location, ranking, speed, and progress directly on the course or within the live image.
• Cross Country and Nordic Combined course mapping: Viewers can track up to three athletes or groups simultaneously on a dynamic course map, including live gaps and relative positions over long distances.
• Comparison and performance-to-leader graphics: ‘Virtual Line to Beat’, ‘Live Speed / Live Delta’, and ‘Comparison to Leader’ provide instant context on how competitors are performing relative to the fastest athlete or group.
• Terrain and effort visualisation: Incline and gradient analysis show elevation profiles and terrain difficulty in relation to athlete position.
• Course animations: Used across multiple sports to explain course layout, key technical sections, and race flow, helping viewers understand competition before and during events.
• Team Radio graphics: New to alpine skiing coverage, these visuals highlight real-time communication between athletes and coaches, giving insight into strategic and emotional moments immediately before a run.

AI-powered stone tracking in curling

Exarchos says, “We have been trying for many years to find a way to help viewers understand what's going on in curling because most have the perception that it's a simple throw of a stone that glides along the ice. Curling is an incredibly technical sport and unless you really understand the technical difficulty you can’t fully appreciate the effort and the capabilities of these athletes.

“Now, with the use of AI technology, this is possible.  In parallel with live video of the competition itself you see the rotations of the stone not just its location of the stone. You also understand the frequency of the sweeping that team members do and why.”

Social media content, formats and delivery

At every venue, OBS has dedicated digital producers working alongside venue teams to identify and capture moments for digital and social platforms. Their role goes beyond content curation. They guide live production teams to adopt a digital-first mindset, encouraging camera operators and directors to capture crowd reactions, behind-the-scenes rituals, and other moments that add depth to the venue’s visual narrative.

Platform-native social media creators also capture human-interest stories and behind-the-scenes footage using mobile devices. Curated content is uploaded to OBS’ Content+ platform, making it instantly available for MRHs to enrich their coverage.

In addition, OBS offers MRHs influencer positions within venues, allowing broadcasters to position their own creators near key action areas, such as athlete arrival zones, warm-up spaces, and podiums, to capture authentic, social-first content using mobile or 360° cameras. This approach helps broadcasters engage younger, mobile-first audiences with personality-driven storytelling and unique perspectives that resonate on social media platforms.

Future planning

OBS is already planning for the IBC at LA28 to be half the size of what the IBC was in Rio whilst producing more than two times the amount of content.

Its partnership with Chinese cloud solutions provider Alibaba began in 2018 ahead of the pandemic delayed Tokyo Games is not only the basis of its ability to virtualise these operations but is significant because the IOC/OBS rely on such third party tech partners to help fund innovation.

“When Alibaba came into the Games, they were Cloud sponsors and we were thinking of our administration systems and stuff like that,” says Exarchos. “They approach us to ask ‘how about broadcast? We started talking and we both realized that there's something there. They have been great partners. We developed Virtual OB van capability with Intel (no longer a partner) and we're looking into such opportunities with Omega.”

In Brisbane 2032 the target is an IBC, which will be essentially the size of the Winter Olympics rather than the Summer Games “and probably be able to do much more. We do not know how to do this yet but we try to be agile.”

Such long term planning and efficiency savings would not be possible, he argued, if individual host broadcasters were still in charge of each games, rather than the internal IOC broadcasting division.