The season is scheduled to begin with two downhills at St. Moritz, Switzerland on 12 and 13 December 2025 and then to remain in Europe all season, according to the initial schedule released on 12 June 2025.[2] For the first time since 2011, the Di Prampero course in Tarvisio, Italy will host the World Cup circuit on 17 January 2026; most recently, the course hosted the 2025 FIS Junior World Championships.[3]
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.[4] The Alpine speed skiing events for women are scheduled to take place on the classic Olimpia delle Tofane course at Cortina d'Ampezzo.[5] The championship in women's downhill is scheduled to be held on Sunday, 8 February.
Season summary
Before the opening of the downhill season, the women's field suffered five major losses. First, defending discipline champion Federica Brignone of Italy suffered a complex injury, including a tear of her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), during the Italian championships in March 2025 that might cost her all of this season.[6] Then, during giant slalom training at Copper Mountain (U.S.) in November, Lara Gut-Behrami of Switzerland and also tore her ACL, a season-ending knee injury.[7] The next day, another training crash on the same slope by rising American speed star Lauren Macuga once again tore her ACL, ending her season as well.[8][9] After returning to Europe for the official start of the speed season for women at St. Moritz, Switzerland, two more training crashes sidelined two more members of the Swiss team. First, Corinne Suter, the defending Olympic champion in this discipline, tore a muscle in her left calf, bruised her left knee, and fractured a bone in her right foot, and so was forecast to be sidelined until at least mid-January 2026.[10] Then, during the final official pre-race training run, two-time Olympic champion Michelle Gisin crashed and was airlifted to a hospital for spinal surgery; however, this surgery was also not expected to be season-ending.[11][12]
Finally, in the first of the two St. Moritz downhills, 41-year-old Lindsey Vonn of the United States, who was directly behind Gisin in the final training run and thus was stopped and held on the course during the airlift, won the race by almost a second for her 83rd career victory (44th in downhill) and thus became the oldest race winner, male or female, in World Cup history.[13] The following day in the second downhill, 22-year-old all-discipline German racer Emma Aicher was able to edge Vonn to prevent back-to-back victories, although Vonn did set a new all-time women's record with her 410th World Cup race (breaking the previous record of 409 by Renate Götschl).[14] The next weekend at Val d'Isère, France, 2024 discipline champion Cornelia Hütter of Austria was the best in flat light conditions, edging past Germany's Kira Weidle-Winkelmann, the race's initial starter, and benefitting from mid-race errors by Vonn (who finished third) and Italy's Sofia Goggia, who dropped all the way back to eighth after being forced off the main track, leaving Vonn still in first by 69 points over Aicher.[15]
The downhill season resumed in January 2026 with a shortened course due to heavy snow in Zauchensee, Austria, and Vonn remained on top of the podium by a little over 1/3 of a second over Norway's Kajsa Vickhoff Lie, allowing her to open up a 129-point lead over Aicher in the discipline.[16] The next week, on the long downhill course at Tarvisio, Italy, which was a strong course for downhillers good at gliding, Nicol Delago posted a home-team victory for her first World Cup win, edging out both Weidle-Winkelmann and Vonn, who posted her fifth-straight podium for the season and opened up a 144-point lead over Aicher in the discipline.[17]
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.[18] 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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