• This year’s Winter Olympics features a flame cauldron inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings of knots. 
• Opening ceremony acts referenced the marble statues of Antonio Canova and famous architectural landmarks.
• The Winter Games run through February 22, 2026. 

A flame cauldron inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s intricate knot drawings and opening-ceremony performances nodding to Antonio Canova and Italy’s architectural landmarks set an art-historical tone for the opening of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics on Friday night.

The festivities at Milano San Siro Olympic Stadium, helmed by producer Marco Balich—an opening ceremonies veteran and Milan local—were an ode to Italian culture, including cinema, fashion, music, and literature, as well as art. The theme of the evening was armonia, Italian for harmony, celebrating the convergence of “beauty and creativity, city and mountain, countries and cultures,” announcer Terry Gannon said during the broadcast.

Oversized recreations of Canova’s Neoclassical marble sculptures rose across the stadium as dancers personifying their mythological subjects—most notably Cupid and Psyche—animated the famed works.

Dancers dressed as angels evoked Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss, a sculpture by Italian artist Antonio Canova, at the opening ceremony of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics at San Siro Stadium on February 06, 2026. Photo: Sarah Stier/Getty Images.

The performances took place on a circular stage meant to evoke Milan’s original layout as a walled city with ring roads. After the opening dance number, three giant paint tubes in red, blue, and yellow descended from the ceiling, the primary colors spilling down as a rainbow-hued troop in monochrome outfits and matching face paint entered the arena.

The choreographed number included dancers costumed as paper dolls, Roman centurions, Rome’s Coliseum, the Duomo in Florence, and a crew of Leonardos accompanied by his framed portrait subjects.

Actors dressed as a symbol of Italian architecture perform during the opening ceremony of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics at San Siro Stadium on February 06, 2026. Photo: Elsa/Getty Images.

It was a striking, art-filled beginning for a show that included performances from Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, American singer-songwriter Mariah Carey, and an ill-considered (and widely  panned) A.I.-generated animation of the Winter Olympics across the decades starring Italian actor Sabrina Impacciatore, star of White Lotus season two and The Paper.

The evening culminated in the much anticipated lighting of the Olympic Cauldron, created by Balichin—who previously headed a Vatican-approved Michelangelo live theater production about the creation of the Sistine Chapel—in collaboration with Lida Castelli and Paolo Fantin. (The 2022 Paris Olympics, which had its own art-filled opening ceremony, had a hot air balloon cauldron designed by Mathieu Lehanneur.)

A general view of a parade of performers dressed as symbols of Italian imagination and creativity during the opening ceremony of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics at San Siro Stadium on February 06, 2026. Photo: Matthias Hangst/Getty Images.

Because this is the first Olympics with dual host cities—the northern city of Milan, and the town of Cortina d’Ampezzo, about a five hour drive to the northeast in the Alps—there are also two cauldrons. Milan’s flame, lit by retired Italian Olympic alpine skiiers Alberto Tonga and Deborah Compagnoni, is dramatically situated beneath the Arco della Pace, a triumphal arch. In Cortina, it was Italian downhill skiier Sofia Goggia, who would go on to win a bronze medal on day two of the games, who did the honors in the Piazza Angelo Dibona.

A view of the Olympic Flame alight in the Cauldron in the main square of Cortina D’Ampezzo on February 08, 2026. Photo: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images.

The cauldrons’ unique design is inspired by the sun as a source of light and energy, as well as knot patterns from the drawings of Leonardo, who lived in Milan from 1483 to 1499. These are “geometric interlacings that symbolize the harmony between nature and human ingenuity… bearing witness to the continuity of time and the natural alternation between day and night,” the Olympic website described.

The cauldron is fabricated from extremely lightweight aeronautical aluminum that can open, unfolding and expanding like a kinetic, folding Hoberman sphere to reveal the flame within a glass-and-metal chamber. It is illuminated on the exterior as well by color-changing LED lights.

A firework display is seen at the Arco della Pace after the lighting of the Olympic cauldron during the opening ceremony of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics at San Siro Stadium on February 06, 2026 in Milan, Italy. Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images.

“It’s going to perform, if you will, for visitors throughout the games,” said Gannon, noting that the cauldrons will be activated on the hour throughout the games, which run through February 22, 2026. “It will be a centerpiece of the city.”