8 April 2026 – Guest blog by Elisa Orlando and Leonardo Ferrante, Libera. Associations, names and numbers against mafias (Italy)

On the occasion of the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the world silently witnessed a new chapter of civil society action that deserves to be acknowledged, commended and showcased as a success story of coordinated advocacy. The Open Olympics 2026 campaign yielded novel and effective outcomes that would have gone unnoticed to those who weren’t looking. What we know and can access today in terms of data about these Games, is a direct result of the campaign and perseverant action by Italian civil society.

The campaign dates back to autumn 2023, when associations, groups and movements met in a climate marked by disappointment and mistrust. Immediately following the 2019 bidding phase, when Milan-Cortina d’Ampezzo was selected to host the games, civil society began to engage with institutions – but were quickly faced with obstacles to participation  in decision making around the organization of the Games: from identifying appropriate locations for sport infrastructure and legacy projects, to safeguarding the environment and its communities. Unfortunately, such decisions took place far out of reach of public debate and accountability, taken solely at the hands of the government who largely disregarded, if not ignored, the requests of civil society.

From this fracture, Open Olympics 2026 was born, not as a continuation of interrupted dialogue, but as an autonomous initiative to bring transparency and civic oversight back to where decisions had ceased to be shared. From the beginning, Open Olympics 2026 had a dual nature: to be a network and a campaign.

As a network, it has brought together twenty national associations and local groups, under the functional coordination of Libera. Given the global relevance of the event, the network opened to gather support from other civil society actors, national and international, and engaged with media and stakeholders from all over the world, both to amplify visibility and to strengthen the demands advanced by the promoters.

As an advocacy campaign, it identifies the Right to Know as a non-negotiable right to be guaranteed: citizens deserve to know how resources are spent, both in the infrastructure projects and in the organisation of the Games. The request to the Italian government was concrete and precise: a single portal of open data, public and accessible, capable of providing timely information on costs, timelines, procedures, contractors and subcontractors, sources of funding, decision-making processes and environmental impact assessments.

From 2024 to today, the civil society network has published three reports. The first one, in May 2024, formally put forward the request for the single portal. In response, the publicly owned company Simico S.p.A., responsible for delivering the infrastructure around the Games, activated the Open Milano Cortina 2026 portal in October 2024. This is today the main source of information on the works envisaged by the Plan (approved with a September 2023 governmental decree). This is the first Olympic and Paralympic event to commit to and put in place such a platform and it is a major win for advocates of access to information and public data, better management and spending for mega-events.

The second report, from February 2025, monitored the limits and potential of the portal, which still requires improvements to enhance usability, data completeness, and interoperability. The third report was published in December 2025 and provides the most up-to-date snapshot of the state of the works related to the Games and, above all, indicates the necessary conditions for effective multilevel transparency, with the involvement of all institutional actors (such as the Milano Cortina Foundation or the local authorities involved).

The latest update from 22 January 2026 shows that the Open Milano Cortina 2026 portal reports 98 projects, with a total investment of €3,55 billion. Only 13% of spending is for essential Olympics’ works; 87% goes to long-term legacy infrastructure. This means that for every €1 spent on something strictly necessary for the Games, €6,6 goes to subsidiary infrastructure. Monitoring successive data releases has allowed us to document a progressive increase in the Plan’s overall cost, affecting, to varying degrees, more than a third of the projects and leading to significant delays in execution (in 2025, the foreseen completion date was postponed for 73% of the projects).

As a result, only 40 works were completed before the Games, for an economic value of €783 million, just 22% of the total estimated expenditure. The other €2,8 billion (78% of the total budget), are still stalled on construction sites, and the final completion of the constructions is projected for 2033.

The spending figure estimate for the promotion and organisation of the Games  remains less clear. The Milan Cortina Foundation disclosed in its Lifetime Budget, before the start of the competitions, a €1.7 billion estimate. However, the Foundation’s private legal nature, though lawful, substantially limits the exercise of the Right to Know and attempts of voluntary disclosure have yielded no results. 

Therefore, while the Paralympic Games closed a few days ago on March 15th, the action of the civic network has not ended yet. It will continue “until the last work is completed”. In addition, this experience is already developing a next phase in dialogue with French civic groups engaged in monitoring the XXVI Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games of 2030 that will take place in the French Alps. The shared objective by these groups is to affirm a simple and radical principle: on the occasion of major events, not a stone should be moved and no public decision should be taken on works and interventions without transparency from the outset. This is the true civic legacy that Open Olympics 2026 delivers, beyond national borders, to international civil society. And this initiative is also a major encouragement to the implementation of States’ international commitments, including UNCAC’s article 9 and resolutions 10/9 and 11/4, among others, to promote transparency and public reporting in public procurement and the management of public finances.

We want to make Open Olympics an international movement that anyone can join. If you are interested, write to us at: common@libera.it