2026 Alpine Skiing World Cup – Men's giant slalom

Although the first race of the World Cup giant slalom season at Sölden went to four-time defending discipline champion Marco Odermatt, as expected, the race saw a long-delayed restart to the "Battle of the Marcos", as both heats were tight battles between Odermatt and Austrian former slalom champion Marco Schwarz, finally returning to form after a catastrophic injury almost two years ago (when Schwarz was narrowly leading Odermatt for the overall World Cup title).^[5] However, in the next race, which took place at Copper Mountain in the U.S., Odermatt went off course and failed to finish the first run, which led to an upset first World Cup victory by Austria's Stefan Brennsteiner, who drew the #1 starting position in the first run, and also led to Brennsteiner taking the overall lead in the discipline over Schwarz, who finished fourth.^[6] The final race in the U.S. for the 2026 season was a giant slalom at Beaver Creek, and Odermatt returned to form with his second win in the three-race series there (and his fifth overall at Beaver Creek, but his first GS there), which allowed Odermatt to move into a tie for first in the discipline with Brennsteiner.^[7]

The next week at Val d'Isère, France, the Swiss team swept the podium; the winner was Loïc Meillard, who came from fifth to earn the victory, while first-run leader Brennsteiner fell back to fifth, allowing Odermatt (who placed third) to regain the solo discipline lead.^[8] A week later, Schwarz finally returned to the top step of the podium for the first time in two full years (22 December 2023, in slalom, a week prior to his injury), after building a dominating lead on the first run and then holding off Brazil's Lucas Pinheiro Braathen on the second, while Brennsteiner, who occupied the bottom step on the podium, moved past Odermatt (sixth) to regain the discipline lead by 5 points.^[9] In the first giant slalom after the Christmas break, at Adelboden, Switzerland, the see-saw continued, as Odermatt built a half-second lead over Braathen on the first run and matched his time on the second, taking both the win (his fifth straight in the GS there) and the discipline lead when Brennsteiner failed to complete the second run.^[10] The last giant slalom before the Winter Olympics, a night race under the lights at Schladming, Austria, featured a neck-and-neck first run between Meillard and Braathen, only for Meillard to win the second run by about three-quarters of a second over Braathen for his second victory of the year; Odermatt's fourth place left him with a lead of 103 points over Braathen, his closest pursuer, with only two more races in the discipline after the Olympics.^[11]

At the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, Braathen raced down the hill as the first starter and, at the end of the first run, held a 0.95 second lead over Odermatt, followed by two more Swiss (Meillard and Thomas Tumler), and -- despite the fact that the Swiss coach got the right to set the course in the second run -- Braathen lost less than half of that lead on the second run to earn the gold for Brazil's (and South America's) first Winter Olympic medal ever, with Odermatt silver (his third medal of the games) and Meillard bronze (his second).^[12] The first giant slalom after the Olympics, in Kranjska Gora (Slovenia), had a very similar result, with Braathen holding a large lead over two Swiss (Meillard and Brennsteiner) after the first run and maintaining it, allowing him to close within 48 points of Odermatt (who was fifth) for the discipline title, with just the finals remaining.^[13]

The World Cup finals in the discipline are scheduled to take place on Tuesday, 24 March 2026 on the Olympialøypa course at Hafjell, near Lillehammer, Norway.^[14] Only the top 25 skiers in the World Cup giant slalom discipline and the winner of the 2026 FIS Junior World Championships in the discipline (Rasmus Bakkevig of Norway), 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. One 500-plus point skier (Giovanni Franzoni of Italy, who competed in GS occasionally during the season) registered, as well as all 25 qualified competitors and Bakkevig, so the field was set at 27. In the first run, Odermatt struggled on the soft snow and failed to finish, meaning that either Braathen or Meillard (who were in the top three after the first run, with Braathen leading) would win the season title if he won the race; they both rose to the occasion, with Meillard holding the lead with just Braathen to go, but Braathen's second run gave him the title by over half a second, with Odermatt second and Meillard third for the season.^[15]

• 2026 Alpine Skiing World Cup – Men's summary rankings
• 2026 Alpine Skiing World Cup – Men's overall
• 2026 Alpine Skiing World Cup – Men's downhill
• 2026 Alpine Skiing World Cup – Men's super-G
• 2026 Alpine Skiing World Cup – Men's slalom
• World Cup scoring system