Salvini Rushes to Claim Victory as Italy Snags 2026 Olympics

(Bloomberg) -- After a joint northern Italian bid was chosen to host the 2026 Winter Olympics, Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini‘s League rushed to take credit, claiming a victory that highlights the country’s economic divide.

Milan, Italy’s business and fashion capital, and Cortina, the glitzy ski resort, beat out a rival dual bid from Sweden, as gold medalists Michela Moili and Sofia Goggia “dabbed” on the stage in Lausanne, Switzerland to close the Italian presentation.

The win was a victory for the Italy that “knows how to do things,” League lawmaker and Cabinet Secretary Giancarlo Giorgetti said after the decision. The sites are in “two of the richest provinces in Europe,” he said. “They have the finances to be able to support the event.”

For the first time in several weeks, the front pages of Italian newspapers on Tuesday weren’t dominated by the endless bickering between the populist government partners -- Salvini’s League and Luigi Di Maio‘s Five Star Movement -- and the country’s economic downturn and imminent disciplinary action by the EU for failing to meet budget rules.

“This victory overcomes a bit the idea that Italy is viewed as isolated internationally,” said Lorenzo Pregliasco, a political analyst at YouTrend.

Politics played a part throughout the Italian bid, as an original proposal to include three sites across the north of the country, Turin, Milan and Cortina, collapsed after Turin -- which hosted the 2006 Winter Olympics -- pulled out under pressure from its local government led by Five Star.

Northern Autonomy

The rightist League was born as a regional movement, and still periodically agitates for northern autonomy. League supporters waved the party’s trademark green flags at a celebration for the successful bid at Milan’s landmark Duomo square Monday night.

Salvini draped himself in the national flag and tweeted that the games will bring in “at least 20,000 jobs, ample investment and 5 billion euros ($5.7 billion) in added value for Italy.”

The roots of Salvini’s League are in the northern regions of Lombardy and Veneto, areas filled with family-owned businesses such as clothing company Benetton SpA and eyewear maker Luxottica SpA.

The euphoria in the north was matched by grumbling in the south, where the municipal government in Rome led by Five Star’s Virginia Raggi was forced to abandon a bid for the 2024 summer games amid stretched financing and political infighting.

The games “will be held in Italy,” Raggi said, congratulating the mayors of both winning cities without naming any of the national political players.

Di Maio also avoided any references to the north-south divide. The win came “far from every logic of power, far far from every interest,” he said in a statement. “Italy always gives the best of itself and wins” when it plays as a team.

The current moods of Rome and Milan couldn’t be more different. On Tuesday, Milan Mayor Beppe Sala posted a celebratory picture on Twitter posing with skis emblazoned with the Olympic rings.

Sala, a 61-year-old former Pirelli manager often mentioned as a future Democratic Party (PD) candidate for premier, is on a roll. Milan won the bid to host the International Expo in Milan in 2015, and Sala successfully oversaw the months-long event that brought in millions of visitors, bolstered the city’s tourism industry and helped fund infrastructure projects.

The city’s skyline is now dotted with skyscrapers that house companies such as the country’s biggest bank, UniCredit SpA, and international insurers Allianz SE and Assicurazioni Generali SpA.

Winning the 2026 Winter Olympics “confirms Milan as Italy’s business engine,” said Paolo Dalla Sega, a professor of urban development at Milan’s Catholic University.

Down south, Rome Mayor Raggi ran video on Facebook of a couple of garbage cans being cleaned, announcing yet another “extraordinary plan” to clean up the city’s streets. The morning after the Olympics announcement, the city’s traffic was paralyzed by an all-day public transportation strike.

--With assistance from Alessandro Speciale, Marco Bertacche, Chiara Albanese and Daniele Lepido.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jerrold Colten in Milan at jcolten@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chad Thomas at cthomas16@bloomberg.net, Dan Liefgreen

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