LGBTQ+ Athletes Are Front and Center at the 2026 Winter Olympic Games

At the start of the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, US fig skater Amber Glenn spoke astatine a property league astir utilizing her level arsenic an Olympian to enactment LGBTQ+ rights. “It isn’t the archetypal clip we’ve had to travel unneurotic arsenic a community,” she said. “I anticipation that I tin usage my level and my dependable passim these Games to effort to promote radical to enactment strong.”

A fewer days later, she posted an Instagram communicative saying she had received “a scary magnitude of hate/threats” pursuing the comments connected societal media. “I’ve ne'er had truthful galore radical privation maine harm before, conscionable for being maine and speaking retired astir being decent,” she told NPR.

Glenn went connected to win gold arsenic portion of the US fig skating team—and she inactive has respective idiosyncratic events upcoming—but the absorption to her comments demonstrates a existent friction astatine the 2026 Games erstwhile it comes to celebrating queer athletes portion besides exposing them to ridicule.

Nearly 50 retired LGBTQ+ athletes are competing astatine the Winter Games, according to OutSports. That fig whitethorn look tiny compared to the 2,900 oregon truthful competitors, but compared to years past erstwhile each retired jock made headlines, it’s huge.

The expanding fig of retired queer athletes besides comes astatine a clip erstwhile the quality of trans radical to enactment successful sports remains hotly contested. A twelvemonth ago, US president Donald Trump signed an enforcement bid banning trans athletes from women’s sports. Following that order, the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee banned trans women from competing successful women’s sports. USA Hockey precocious reversed its 2019 policy that allowed trans athletes to play, adjacent successful alleged “beer league” games.

“Protecting women’s categories is 1 of the cardinal reforms that we volition pursue,” Mark Adams, a spokesperson for International Olympic Committee president Kirsty Coventry, told a property league connected February 7.

On Tuesday, Swedish skier Elis Lundholm became the archetypal openly trans jock to compete successful the Winter Games. Lundholm, who competes successful the women’s category, was assigned pistillate astatine commencement and identifies arsenic male. Lundholm told reporters helium hasn’t thought astir his historical infinitesimal overmuch and is alternatively focused connected his sport. UK skier Tess Johnson told the Associated Press that it’s “awesome” Lundholm was competing arsenic the archetypal trans jock astatine the Winter Games. “I mean, we're present to ski, we're present to person fun, and that's precisely what we do,” she added.

This accrued involvement successful LGBTQ+ athletes comes arsenic Heated Rivalry, the wildly fashionable Canadian amusement astir 2 closeted hockey players, is bringing troves of caller fans to the sport. HBO Max released the amusement successful Italy this month.

On the crushed successful Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, queer athletes and fans are looking for the aforesaid acceptance. In Milan, they tin find that astatine Pride House, a gathering and treatment abstraction unfastened to the full metropolis astatine the MEET Digital Culture Center. First organized astatine the 2010 Games successful Vancouver, British Columbia, Pride House is intended to beryllium a harmless abstraction for queer radical coming from each implicit the satellite to ticker the Games. Each time the halfway offers a spot to ticker competitions and enactment successful meetings, performances, and societal events.

“Pride House was calved arsenic a harmless spot particularly for athletes who travel from countries wherever it is not casual to beryllium out," says Alice Redaelli, president of CIG Arcigay Milano, which helped signifier Pride House with respective different queer organizations. “Sports is 1 of the worlds successful which we inactive conflict to look arsenic LGBTQIA+ people, wherever concepts specified arsenic sex and machismo dominate.”

Having much retired athletes could assistance pave the mode for much acceptance of queer competitors successful aboriginal Games wherever section laws warrant those freedoms. “In Sochi successful 2014, for example, it was not imaginable to signifier the Pride House due to the fact that of Russia’s repressive policies,” Redaelli says.