So far, 41 athletes have qualified for the U.S. Olympic team for the 2026 Milan Cortina Games:
Alpine Skiing: Mikaela Shiffrin, Lindsey Vonn
Biathlon: Margie Freed, Deedra Irwin, Maxime Germain, Campbell Wright
Cross-Country Skiing: Jessie Diggins
Curling: Cory Thiesse (mixed doubles, team), Korey Dropkin (mixed doubles), Taylor Anderson-Heide (team), Tabitha Peterson (team), Tara Peterson (team), Aileen Geving (team, alternate), Danny Casper (team), Aidan Oldenburg (team), Ben Richardson (team), Luc Violette (team), Rich Ruohonen (team, alternate)
Freestyle Skiing: Quinn Dehlinger (aerials), Alex Ferreira (halfpipe), Jaelin Kauf (moguls), Alex Hall (slopestyle/big air), Troy Podmilsak (slopestyle/big air)
Hockey: Jack Eichel, Quinn Hughes, Auston Matthews, Charlie McAvoy, Brady Tkachuk, Matthew Tkachuk
Short Track Speed Skating: Eunice Lee, Julie Letai, Kamryn Lute, Kristen Santos-Griswold, Corinne Stoddard, Clayton DeClemente, Andrew Heo, Brandon Kim
Ski Mountaineering: Anna Gibson, Cam Smith
Snowboarding: Chloe Kim, Red Gerard
All athletes who meet objective qualifying criteria and/or are nominated by their national governing bodies must still be approved by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee.
Team USA is determined through international competition results, selection committees and U.S. Olympic Trials in some sports. There will ultimately be around 200 athletes on the team overall.
Here’s a look at who qualified for the team so far:
Alpine Skiing
Mikaela Shiffrin qualified for her fourth Olympic team by winning the first three World Cup slaloms of the season in November.
Shiffrin, the 2014 Olympic slalom gold medalist and 2018 Olympic giant slalom gold medalist, is in line to tie the current U.S. record of four Olympic women’s Alpine appearances.
However, Lindsey Vonn will break that record by competing in a fifth Olympics in 2026. Vonn clinched her spot after finishing first, second and third in the first three downhills of the season in December.
Vonn, 41, will become the oldest American in any skiing discipline in Olympic history.
The full U.S. Olympic Alpine team — based largely on World Cup results — will be announced in January.
Biathlon
Campbell Wright, a 23-year-old who competed at the 2022 Olympics for New Zealand, clinched his spot on Aug. 29 when U.S. Biathlon published its final Olympic selection procedures.
In December, Margie Freed, Deedra Irwin and Maxime Germain joined Wright on the team, qualifying based on World Cup results.
More biathletes will make the team based on results this season.
Wright, who won two silver medals at last February’s World Championships, was the lone U.S. biathlete to meet the early Olympic selection criteria of two top-10 finishes last season (World Cup or World Championships) or by finishing in the top 25 of the final World Cup season standings.
Biathlon is the lone Winter Olympic sport where the U.S. has yet to win an Olympic medal.
Wright could change that, though he ranked 17th overall over the 2024-25 World Cup season with a best finish of fourth outside of the World Championships. Wright was the top man in the standings under the age of 23.
He was born and raised in New Zealand to parents who were born in the U.S. He grew up skiing at the Snow Farm in Wanaka on New Zealand’s South Island.
He switched representation from New Zealand to the U.S. in late 2023.
“When I went to the U.S., I was just like, ‘You guys actually have facilities you can stay at for free?’” he told the Threshold podcast. “‘And you have a physio and a gym and a massage and a shooting coach?’ So I was just absolutely blown away by the support that those guys get.”
His bio now reads, “Kiwi racing for USA.”
In 2022, Irwin recorded the best individual Olympic biathlon finish in U.S. history -- seventh place in the 15km. As of her Olympic nomination on Dec. 21, Irwin was having her best World Cup season, ranking 22nd overall.
Freed, a former World Cup cross-country skier, and Germain, who split time between Alaska and France growing up, will each make their Olympic debut.
Cross-Country Skiing
Jessie Diggins became the first cross-country skier to qualify for the U.S. Olympic team after winning the lone skiathlon on the World Cup schedule (on Dec. 6) before the Milan Cortina Games.
Diggins is the best cross-country skier in U.S. history with an Olympic medal of every color and three World Cup overall titles. She plans tor retire after this season after competing in a fourth Olympics at age 34, bidding to win the first individual gold medal in U.S. cross-country history.
The full U.S. Olympic cross-country skiing team will be announced in January.
Curling
The men’s curling team of Danny Casper, Aidan Oldenburg, Ben Richardson, Luc Violette and alternate Rich Ruohonen and women’s curling team of Tabitha Peterson, Tara Peterson, Taylor Anderson-Heide and Cory Thiesse won the Olympic Trials in November, then each clinched Olympic spots at the global, last-chance qualification tournament in December.
Thiesse and Korey Dropkin won the U.S. Olympic Trials for mixed doubles curling in February, then clinched their Olympic spots by placing fifth at the world championship last May. Thiesse and Dropkin, who previously combined for four runner-up finishes at Olympic Trials, are each in line to make their Olympic debut.
They will be the first U.S. athletes across all sports to compete at the Milan Cortina Games given the Olympic mixed doubles event starts two days before the Opening Ceremony. Thiesse, competing in both mixed doubles and the women’s team event, will be the busiest U.S. athlete at the Games across all sports.
The entire men’s team makes their Olympic debuts after beating 2018 Olympic gold medalist John Shuster at the trials. Ruohonen. at 54, would be the oldest American to compete in a medal event in Winter Olympic history, according to Olympedia.org. In Olympic curling, alternates can be inserted into lineups before games for strategic reasons.
The Peterson sisters return to the Olympics, while Anderson-Heide makes her Olympic debut. The women’s team added Olympic veteran Aileen Geving as its alternate before the last-chance qualifier.
Freestyle Skiing
Alex Hall, Alex Ferreira, Jaelin Kauf and Quinn Dehlinger qualified via world rankings lists on June 10.
Up to one male and one female athlete in specific freestyle skiing disciplines can clinch an Olympic spot via International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) base ranking lists that are largely determined by results from the previous season.
The highest-ranked American man and American woman in aerials, halfpipe, moguls, ski cross and slopestyle clinched an Olympic spot, should they also be ranked in the top three in the world.
Hall (2022 Olympic slopestyle gold medalist), Ferreira (two-time Olympic halfpipe medalist), Kauf (2022 Olympic moguls silver medalist) and Dehlinger (world championships gold (team event) and silver (individual) medalist) met that criteria. More skiers will be named to the Olympic team in all of those events this winter.
Troy Podmilsak qualified for his first Olympics by winning two World Cup big air events early in the 2025-26 season.
Hockey
Each of the 12 Olympic men’s hockey teams named their first six players on June 16.
The U.S. chose six players, all age 28 and younger who came through its national team development program, to make their Olympic debut in 2026. NHL players will be part of the Olympics for the first time since the 2014 Sochi Games.
Matthews captained the U.S. at last February’s Four Nations Face-Off and is the most prolific American goal scorer in NHL history on a per-game basis.
The Tkachuks, sons of four-time Olympian Keith Tkachuk, are the first brothers to be named to a U.S. Olympic hockey team since 1998.
Hughes, the 2024 Norris Trophy winner as the NHL’s top defenseman, is one of three brothers who could all make the team. The full 25-man roster will be named closer to the Games.
Eichel is set to be the first U.S. hockey player to play in both a Youth Olympics and an Olympics. He played at the first Youth Winter Games in 2012.
McAvoy is a already a world champion on the U18 and U20 levels. His father-in-law is U.S. Olympic head coach Mike Sullivan.
Short Track Speed Skating
Corinne Stoddard, Kristen Santos-Griswold, Julie Letai, Kamryn Lute, Eunice Lee, Andrew Heo, Brandon Kim and Clayton DeClemente were named as the Olympic team on Dec. 13. They met objective criteria for Olympic spots via World Tour results this fall and results at September’s U.S. Championships.
Stoddard and Santos-Griswold, the top U.S. skaters, are expected to compete in all five events in Milan.
Ski Mountaineering
Anna Gibson and Cam Smith will compete in ski mountaineering’s Olympic debut in 2026. Together, they won a World Cup mixed relay on Dec. 7 in Salt Lake City to earn the U.S. one female and male spot at the Games.
Gibson, who ran the 1500m at the 2024 Olympic Track and Field Trials, picked up ski mountaineering in the last six months. Smith asked her to give it a try after they both competed at the Broken Arrow Skyrace, a mountain-climbing and trail-running event in June. Gibson was a junior national champion in cross-country skiing before focusing on running in college.
Smith has competed internationally in ski mountaineering for nearly a decade. He’s had a “lifelong obsession” with the Olympics since watching the 2002 Salt Lake City Games on TV at age 6. His phone password has been 2626 for the last two years.
Snowboard Halfpipe
Chloe Kim, a two-time Olympic snowboard halfpipe gold medalist, became the first athlete to mathematically clinch a spot on the team via her No. 1 world ranking on April 1.
Kim won the two biggest competitions this past season: January’s X Games, her seventh title at the annual Aspen, Colorado, event, and the biennial World Championships for a third time.
In February, she will bid to become the first person to win three consecutive Olympic snowboard halfpipe gold medals.
Snowboard Slopestyle/Big Air
Red Gerard, the 2018 Olympic snowboard slopestyle gold medalist, clinched a 2026 Olympic spot by meeting criteria in May 1 world rankings: as the highest-ranked American man in slopestyle who is also ranked in the top three in the world.
Gerard, who in 2018 became at age 17 the youngest snowboarder to win Olympic gold, added X Games slopestyle titles the last two years.
No American woman met that May 1 world ranking criteria in slopestyle. Up to four U.S. men and women will ultimately be named to the team for slopestyle and big air by January.
