Security lessons from the Ceremonies and the Olympic Torch of Milano Cortina 2026
A venue has a huge advantage for security: it stays still. We can study it, define its boundaries, organise access, establish routes, position resources and build procedures that work in that specific space.
An Olympic Ceremony already complicates this model, and Milano Cortina 2026 took it even further. There was not a single Ceremony, but a system of events differing in location, scale and audience. The Opening Ceremony in Milan, on 6 February at San Siro, took place at the same time as three Capsules in Cortina, Livigno and Predazzo. The Olympic Closing Ceremony on 22 February and the Paralympic Opening Ceremony on 6 March were held at the Arena in Verona, while the Paralympic Closing Ceremony took place in Cortina on 15 March. At the same time, the Olympic Torch was travelling across Italy before reaching Milan, with two symbolic locations where the Flame had a distinct presence: the cauldrons in Milan and Cortina.
From the perspective of the show, these were different moments. From the perspective of security, they had something in common: you cannot protect only the place. You have to protect what happens while the place changes.
Protecting the sequence
The easiest mistake is to treat a Ceremony as an ordinary major event with a few additional complications. In reality, it is a system: spectators, athletes, performers, production staff, delegations, institutional guests, media, suppliers, vehicles, technical systems and a protocol that imposes precise timings and sequences.
At San Siro, with 61,221 tickets sold, plus 10,000 spectators at the mountain locations, the Ceremony involved a huge audience and more than ten thousand stakeholders, in addition to athletes, VIPs, media, guests, operators, performers and law-enforcement personnel. The security setup included screening of people and vehicles, staggered arrivals for dignitaries and separate routes for different flows.
This is why security does not protect only people and infrastructure: it also protects the sequence of the event. If that sequence is disrupted, the problem is not merely operational; it immediately becomes institutional, media-related and reputational. At an ordinary event, within limits, we can stop a procedure, move an activity or delay the arrival of a group. In a Ceremony, part of what happens is tied to the minute. The security setup therefore has to be robust enough to protect the programme and flexible enough to deal with what the programme did not anticipate.
At most events, we mainly think in terms of space: where is the entrance, where is the perimeter, where is the evacuation route? Ceremonies require us to think in terms of time as well: who has to arrive first, who can enter later, when does an area change function, when does a group have to be moved, when does an institutional presence change the setup? The venue is no longer simply a map. It is a sequence of different states of the same system.
An area that is a route at 6 p.m. may become a controlled space at 8 p.m., and shortly afterwards a departure route again. Security therefore has to design not only where people move, but how the meaning of a space changes over time. This is why security and production cannot work one after the other.
They have to work together.
Three Capsules, one Ceremony
At the same time as the Milan Opening Ceremony, three Capsules took place in Cortina, Livigno and Predazzo: smaller events, in venues already under lockdown and without dignitaries expected, but still part of the same organisational and security system as the main Ceremony.
This is a typical major-event problem: you cannot simply scale down the security setup of a large event and call it a solution for a smaller one. The location changes, the audience changes, the flows change, the institutional presence changes, and so does the level of complexity. The measures have to change accordingly.
The principle behind those measures cannot.
Security for a Capsule is not a downgraded version of security at San Siro. It is the solution appropriate to that specific reality.
A multi-site Ceremony is not simply a Ceremony with several venues. It is a single security problem distributed across several local systems.
Verona, Cortina, and the same people
The other Ceremonies added a different challenge: each venue was a case in its own right.
In Verona, the Arena — a Roman monument in the historic city centre that had never hosted an Olympic event — required the protection of people, the event and the heritage at the same time, with flows concentrated in the historic centre: 5,500 net spectators for the Olympic Closing Ceremony and 5,000 spectators and 6,686 stakeholders for the Paralympic Opening Ceremony, together with the accessibility requirements specific to a Paralympic Ceremony. In Cortina, the Paralympic Closing Ceremony involved 1,695 spectators and 2,015 stakeholders.
The choice was to adapt the security setup to the physical characteristics of each venue, while having the same people manage the system throughout, and to be personally present on the day of the event, unlike some of my other responsibilities.
That is what I call flexgidity: the flexible application of rigid rules, the same concept I had used for the Villages when we decided to modify the perimeters. Locations change, and with them the measures. The people who know how and why those measures were designed do not, and they are the ones who keep the underlying principle consistent from one venue to another.
A security setup can be different in every location, as long as the people managing it remain the same.
The Torch: an event without a perimeter
If the Ceremony complicates the concept of a venue, the Torch challenges it completely.
The relay crossed Italy for 63 days, 60 stages and approximately 12,000 kilometres, reaching all 110 provinces and more than 300 municipalities. It was not a single area to protect, but a succession of roads, squares and public moments, each with different characteristics.
And the Torch had to be visible. Protection could not simply be based on distance: it had to create the conditions for the public to be close without allowing that proximity to become uncontrolled unpredictability.
The Torch Relay was managed independently from my function, which acted as an interface with the Prefectures and Police Headquarters for the Ceremonies. For the rest of Italy, the relay was managed separately, but coordination was continuous.
The lesson, however, is the same. When an event crosses hundreds of municipalities, the same security setup cannot simply be replicated everywhere. Urban environments change, authorities change, infrastructure changes, flows change, and audiences change.
The security principle remains the same, and the level of protection cannot depend on whether we are in a small town square or a major city.
The same applies to the two cauldrons: one Flame, two locations. When the symbol is one but the locations are two, what needs to be shared is not necessarily the security setup.
It is the principle by which we protect it.
In the end, we protect a story
Perhaps this is the most interesting aspect of the Ceremonies and the Torch: we are not protecting only a structure or a group of people. We are protecting a narrative.
The Torch has to arrive. The Ceremony has to happen. The athletes have to be the protagonists. The public has to be able to participate. Institutions have to be present. The city has to keep functioning.
All at the same time.
Security therefore cannot simply focus on preventing something from happening.
It has to create the conditions for what is supposed to happen to happen as planned, even when the system is under pressure.
It is a less visible task than a barrier or a screening point.
But perhaps that is precisely the point.
In major-event security, the best result is often not something you can see.
It is something that simply happens without interrupting the story everyone came to watch.
Essential sources
- Francesco di Castri — Security in the Olympic Villages and during the Ceremonies, presentation to the International Security Briefing, Rho, 30 September 2025. Structure of the Ceremonies, Capsules, venues and flows.
- IOC — Milano Cortina 2026 Opening Ceremony. Participation figures for San Siro and the mountain locations.
- LaPresse — Milano-Cortina 2026, le tappe della fiamma olimpica, 4 December 2025. Duration, stages, distance, provinces and municipalities covered by the Torch Relay.
- Sportface — Milano-Cortina 2026, la cerimonia di apertura affidata a Balich Wonder Studio. Locations and dates of the Olympic and Paralympic Ceremonies.
The operational and organisational observations are the author’s professional reflections and do not constitute an official communication by Fondazione Milano Cortina 2026. The scenarios described are illustrative and do not provide a detailed description of the security measures adopted during Milano Cortina 2026.
Francesco di Castri
Security Manager, Villages, Ceremonies, IOC and IPC, Fondazione Milano Cortina 2026.
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