In the last days of 2025, the social media accounts of the 2026 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games of Milan-Cortina revealed that Dardust composed the soundtrack of the coming Games. He has also composed Eurovision and Sanremo entries, including “Soldi” in 2019.
Italian Fantasia in Milan-Cortina
The announcement came through social media posts on Instagram and Youtube videos, alongside articles on the Olympics official website.
Working on the anthem has been an enormous responsibility: touching such a powerful symbol means entering a sacred place in collective memory. I wanted to respect its force, perhaps updating its sound under a contemporary light. My goal was to leave a lasting emotion, a note which, in ten years, will bring back to your mind a race start, a victory, an applause.
Dardust on his soundtrack “Italian Fantasia” for the 2026 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games
The soundtrack will be composed of more than 20 different segments (possibly tracks), with different styles (classical, electropop, etc.), but organised around a leitmotiv of five notes. The whole production is said to be inspired by the contrast between the verticality, rythms and speed of Milan (percussions, arpeggiators, digital and analog synthesis) and the light and openness of the mountains of Cortina (piano, orchestra, choirs and echoes).
Dardust also sees his work as a tribute to the late Ennio Morriconne, composer of more than 400 film and TV soundtracks, including “Once Upon a Time in the West”, “The Good, The Bad and the Ugly” and “The Professional”. The tribute is materialised by the voice of Susanna Rigacci, a soprano singer who worked with Morriconne in the last 20 years of his career.
What is an “Olympics soundtrack”?
The soundtrack of the Olympics can take many form, and is usually a series of tracks used during the different ceremonies of the Games: the Opening Ceremony, the Closing Ceremony, as well as the medal ceremonies for each sport. It is the “original” soundtrack part of these events, usually without vocals (or without lyrics) although original songs have been written for the Games in the past, two of which were performed by Eurovision alumni: Céline Dion in Atlanta 1996 (“The Power of the Dream”) and Olivia Newton-John (alongside John Farnham) in Sidney 2000 (“Dare to Dream”).
Dardust already composed the music of the Handover Ceremony between Beijing and Milan-Cortina for the Beijing 2022 Closing Ceremony, but as a main composer, he succeeds French composer and producer Victor Le Masne, who wrote the soundtrack of the Paris 2024 Games, already “a fusion of the symphonic and the electronic” which was mostly praised by Olympic fans, with tracks such as “Synchronicity“, “Higher” and the official theme of the Games, “Parade“. Other composers for past Olympics include Giorgio Moroder, David Foster and John Williams.
Dardust and Eurovision
Dardust, the artist’s name of Dario Faini, is mostly known in Eurovision circles as one of the composers behind Mahmood’s “Soldi” in Eurovision 2019 for Italy, which finished 2nd. He also co-wrote “La Noia” and “Fighter”, songs representing Italy and Luxembourg in 2024, and has been behind some Sanremo songs such as “Andromeda” by Elodie, “Dieci” by Annalisa, or “La Genesi del tuo colore” by Irama.
He also performed himself on the Eurovision stage as an interval act in Turin, in 2022, during the first semi-final.
Do you enjoy Dardust’s work as a composer and artist? Do you like what you hear in the first excerpts of “Italian Fantasia”? Will you tune in to the opening ceremony, where another Turin 2022 personnality, co-host Laura Pausini, will perform? Tell us more in the comments below or on socials!
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