Austria 2026Eurovision🇮🇹 Italy

Sanremo Festival to be held on February 24-28 2026 — after the Winter Olympics

The Festival will be held between Olympics and Paralympics

Italian public broadcaster RAI has confirmed the dates for next year’s Festival di Sanremo. Due to the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics, the festival has been set to take place later than usual, at the end of February.

Next year, Italy will host the 25th Winter Olympic Games, and 14th Winter Paralympic Games, across northern Italy. The main venues will be in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo (which was the host of the 1956 Winter Olympics), making both cities the official hosts of the Games.

The Games were honoured during the second night of the 2025 edition of the Sanremo Festival, but they were also an issue for RAI, which is the Italian broadcaster of the Games and the “host” broadcaster (although technically the host broadcaster will remain OBS, the Olympic Broadcasting Services). Indeed, Sanremo is one of the biggest audience magnet for RAI, with the last two nights of 2025 reaching more than 70% of audience shares. The same will be true for the Winter Olympics, where RAI channels will have to broadcast the main evening events, which include the most popular indoor sports like short-track speed skating, figure skating, and ice hockey. Both major events cannot clash.

Having virtually secured the organisation of the Festival after a legal case forced the City of Sanremo to open the organisation to competition through a public tender process (RAI was the only candidate), the broadcaster had to reorganise the calendar to make everything fit. This meant that the 76th edition of the Sanremo Festival will take place from February 24 to 28, the last week of the month.

This departs from the usual slots of the last 10 years, when the Festival was held on the first or second week of February. The latest exception was 2021, when the Covid pandemic meant RAI were careful and pushed the event all the way to the early days of March.

The new slot would also put the festival between both Games, with the Olympics held between February 2 and 22, and the Paralympics between March 6 and 15.

In terms of Eurovision season, this will make Sanremo clash with the later stages of Melodifestivalen, as well as the UMK final in Finland, which has already been confirmed to be held on February 28.

How do you feel about Sanremo being postponed? Will you still be watching it? And will you be watching the Games? Tell us more in the comments below or on social media at @escxtra! And below, you can find the official anthem of the 2026 Games, sung by Arisa, “Fino all’alba” (“until dawn”).

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RAIQuotidianoJose AntonioMilano Cortina 2026

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