The men's downhill in the 2026 FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup is scheduled to consist of nine events, including the final. The season is scheduled to begin with two downhills at Beaver Creek, Colorado (U.S.) on 4 and 5 December 2025, then to proceed to Europe for the remainder of the races, according to the initial schedule released on 12 June 2025.[1]
The season will be interrupted for the quadrennial 2026 Winter Olympics in three regions in Italy -- Milan, the Stelvio Pass, and Cortina d'Ampezzo -- during 6–22 February 2026.[2] All of the Alpine skiing events for men are scheduled to take place on the classic Stelvio course at Bormio.[3] The championship in men's downhill is scheduled to be held on Saturday, 7 February.
Season summary
The start of the downhill season at Beaver Creek (U.S.) ran into scheduling problems, as high winds and a large impending weekend snowstorm led to (1) the cancellation of one of the two downhills scheduled there and (2) the date of the second one being moved up to the planned date of the first one (4 December); the cancelled race was added as a second downhill at Val Gardena (Italy) two weeks later.[4] The contested downhill at Beaver Creek was then won by defending discipline champion Marco Odermatt of Switzerland, who defeated American Ryan Cochran-Siegle by 0.3 seconds.[5] In the first of the two races now at Val Gardena, overcast conditions led to the downhill being shortened and still needing almost four hours to complete due to the delays caused by fog, but Odermatt won again for his 50th overall World Cup victory, edging his compatriot Franjo von Allmen and tying Alberto Tomba (Italy) for third all-time among World Cup men, with only Ingmar Stenmark (Sweden) (86 wins), Marcel Hirscher (Austria/Netherlands) (67), and Hermann Maier (Austria) (54) still ahead of him.[6] Two days later, the results were flipped in the second downhill, with von Allmen edging Odermatt in a full-length downhill and closing to within 50 points of the discipline lead.[7]
The downhill season resumed with back-to-back weeks at Wengen, Switzerland, and Kitzbühel, Austria. The downhill at Wengen was run on a shortened course due to high winds, but Odermatt dominated to win his fourth straight downhill at Wengen, with Austria's Vincent Kriechmayr (0.79 sec) his closest challenger, thereby increasing Odermatt's lead in the discipline over von Allmen (who finished fourth) to exactly 100 points.[8]
Finals
The World Cup finals in the discipline are scheduled to take place on Saturday, 21 March 2026 on the Olympiabakken course at Kvitfjell, near Lillehammer, Norway.[9] Only the top 25 skiers in the World Cup downhill discipline and the winner of the 2026 FIS Junior World Championships in the discipline, plus any skiers who have scored at least 500 points in the World Cup overall classification for the season, will be eligible to compete in the final, and only the top 15 will earn World Cup points.
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