The Winter Olympics is a momentous occasion that is typically welcomed by its host city and its citizens. However, hosting these Olympic games comes with its share of risks. These arise or are compounded by the massive influx of athletes and spectators, underlying political issues, the weather, and other factors.
In this guide, we discuss the risks associated with the Winter Olympics that insurance professionals may find amusing or interesting to consider, or so they can recommend the appropriate coverage to clients hosting other large events.
The insurance issues for the 2026 Winter Olympics center on a few broad categories. These can translate into large financial exposures for organizers and stakeholders across the world.
When figuring out which cover is most needed and appropriate for the Winter Olympics, knowing the risks associated with this sporting event is the first step. The most common risks to insure against include:
Winter sports carry high injury rates, so winter Olympics injury risk is one of the core exposures. Research across several Olympic winter games editions finds that an overall injury incidence of about 9.6% of athletes, with snow sports the highest at about 11.3%. The riskiest events include snowboard cross and aerials and slopestyle in freestyle skiing, with injury rates between about 28% and 31%. Knees, heads, and ankles are the most affected areas.
Meanwhile, Nordic events like cross country skiing and Nordic combined tend to see lower injury rates.
To provide the appropriate coverage, insurance professionals are advised to provide:
The 2026 Olympic games in Milan–Cortina will rely heavily on artificial snow. Italy has already produced around 1.6 million cubic meters of "technical snow" for Games venues, supported by large high‑elevation reservoirs, including a basin in Livigno that holds about 200 million liters of water and can feed systems that generate roughly 800 million liters of snow. This scenario creates several property and liability exposures like:
Property and builders' risk policies, plus environmental liability coverage, respond to these exposures for the host city venues and private operators.
Large sporting events like the Olympic games buy high‑limit event cancellation and revenue‑protection cover. The IOC has historically purchased around $800 million worth of protection for each Summer Games, mainly to protect broadcast and sponsorship income if the event is cancelled or postponed. In the case of the Winter Games, this typically requires lower limits but uses similar structures. Cancellation or disruption triggers can include:
Stakeholders that may buy their own event cancellation and non‑appearance cover include:
Some risks, such as venues not being finished on time or teams choosing not to travel, are often excluded and require separate negotiation if cover is available at all.
During the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022, market commentary identified the threat of war in Ukraine as the biggest concern for Winter Games insurers. That conflict could have forced withdrawals or boycotts and triggered appearance and cancellation claims. For Milan–Cortina 2026, relevant political risk factors include:
From an insurance standpoint:
Recent reporting shows pro‑Russian hacker groups have already targeted Italian government and Olympic winter games‑related sites with distributed denial‑of‑service attacks, including attacks on hotels and local portals around Cortina d'Ampezzo. Italian authorities say they repelled these attempts and deployed additional cyber teams in partnership with the national Olympic committee.
Cyber exposures include:
Disruption to ticketing, transport, and access control systems.
Ransomware or data theft affecting volunteers, athletes and visitors.
Attacks on broadcast infrastructure that hit advertising revenues.
Cyber insurance for the organizing committee, key vendors, and some large national delegations helps absorb incident response costs, business interruption and third‑party liability linked to these attacks.
Climate change is reshaping the Olympic winter games, and there are concerns that many insurers are not prepared to address such risks. Northern Italy now has significantly fewer freezing days than in 1956, and February temperatures around Cortina are several degrees warmer than they were seventy years ago. Risks of this type for the 2026 Winter Olympics include:
Weather and non‑appearance insurance policies help protect organizers when individual races or days are lost, while full event cancellation policies address more severe scenarios.
Different stakeholders face distinct insurance issues like:
For insurers that cater to US brokers and agents, the main touchpoints are:
Insuring this major sporting event is no small undertaking. It comes as no surprise for insurers to feel some apprehension when providing coverage and hope for it to go smoothly.
That's partly why it can take years of advanced planning, high‑limit multi‑line programs, deep hazard modelling, and tight contract and wording work. A global panel of insurers and reinsurers willing to share very concentrated, but finite‑duration risks is also instrumental in successfully covering an event of this scale.
For the 2026 Winter Olympics, insurance giant Allianz is again the official insurer. This industry giant entered a deal where they will remain the official insurer for the Olympics (and Paralympics) until 2032. Here's a rundown of how insurers and brokers can manage an event as massive as the Winter Olympics:
The odds are that you are not personally going to insure the Winter Olympics, but there's plenty to learn here and apply to the events you'll be working on with your insurance company!
