2026 Alpine Skiing World Cup – Men's overall

Opening months (October 2025 to Christmas)

Although the first race of the World Cup season, a giant slalom at Sölden in October, 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).^[6] The next race, the opening slalom of the season in Levi in November, produced the first World Cup victory ever for Brazil, by 2023 World Cup slalom champion Lucas Pinheiro Braathen, who then skied for his native Norway before transferring to his mother's homeland of Brazil in 2025 after a one-year retirement.^[7] At the same time, eight-time men's overall World Cup champion Marcel Hirscher, who won all of those championships while skiing for Austria before transferring to the Netherlands after a six-year retirement, announced that his return to the World Cup circuit from his season-ending injury in December 2024 would not take place until January 2026.^[7] A week later, in another slalom in Gurgl, Austria, France's Paco Rassat, who had finished a career-best sixth the week before, came from 14th place on his second run to earn his first World Cup victory in his first World Cup podium finish, which gave him the lead in both the discipline and the overall World Cup standings.^[8]

The World Cup races for both men and women then moved to the Western Hemisphere for the next two weeks, with the first two races, a super-G and a giant slalom, taking place at Copper Mountain (U.S.), which hadn't hosted the World Cup since 2001. The super-G came down to a two-man battle, but defending discipline champion Marco Odermatt of Switzerland edged Austria's Vincent Kriechmayr by .08 seconds for the victory, in a race that was also noted for the return after almost two years (from a life-threatening injury suffered in January 2024) of 2020 World Cup overall champion Aleksander Aamodt Kilde of Norway, who is also the fiancé of American star Mikaela Shiffrin, and Shiffrin was present at the finish line to greet him.^[9] However, in the giant slalom, 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), although Odermatt continued to hold the overall lead by 34 points over Schwarz, who finished fourth.^[10]

The start of the downhill season at Beaver Creek 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.^[11] The contested downhill at Beaver Creek was then won by defending discipline champion Odermatt, who defeated American Ryan Cochran-Siegle by 0.3 seconds.^[12] The super-G the next day battled high winds and fresh snow, and a crash by Switzerland's Franjo von Allmen, starting 14th, led to a delay, after which none of the later runners were able to crack the top ten, and the weather conditions led to the race being stopped after 31 racers had gone; the winner was Kriechmayr, who had started sixth and defeated the field (except for one other racer) by over a second.^[13] The third race at Beaver Creek two days later (and final race in the U.S. for the 2026 season) was a giant slalom, 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), thus increasing his overall lead.^[14]

Returning to Europe the next week at Val d'Isère (France0 for two technical races, the Swiss team swept the podium in the giant slalom; the winner was Loïc Meillard, who came from fifth to earn the victory, while Odermatt (who placed third) regained the outright GS discipline lead.^[15] The next day, slalom resumed, and Norway's Timon Haugan, who had failed to podium the day before after being in third following the first run, held off Loïc Meillard of Switzerland, the previous day's winner, to become the third different winner in the discipline this season and take over the discipline lead.^[16] Moving on to the first of the three speed 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), Hirscher (Austria/Netherlands) (67), and Hermann Maier (Austria) (54) still ahead of him.^[17] The next day, continuing fog in the morning followed an unusual late weather shift allowed the later racers to have clear visibility and led to the first victory ever on the World Cup circuit for a male Czech skier – Jan Zabystřan, who started 29th.^[18] Odermatt, the only skier among the first ten starters to finish in the top ten, was second and regained the discipline lead, thus once again giving him the lead in each of his three disciplines.^[18] The next day, the results were flipped in the second downhill, with von Allmen edging Odermatt in a full-length downhill, as Odermatt's overall lead mushroomed to over 450 points (765–302) over runner-up Henrik Kristoffersen of Norway.^[19]

A day later, the men were in nearby Alta Badia for the last two races, both technical, before Christmas. And Marco Schwarz finally returned to the top step of the podium for the first time in two full years (22 December 2023, in slalom, his last completed race prior to his injury), building a dominating lead on the first giant slalom run and then holding off Braathen on the second.^[20] Finally, in the last World Cup race before Christmas, the aptly-named Clément Noël of France held the slalom lead after the first run, but Norway's Atle Lie McGrath passed him on the second for the victory, thus denying Noël a holiday-appropriate win, with Schwarz being disqualified on the second run while seeking a back-to-back win and McGrath's teammate Haugan (fourth) moving into second place overall behind Odermatt (although still over 400 points behind).^[21]

Midseason (Christmas to Winter Olympics)

Two days after Christmas, in the last race in the 2025 calendar year (which was also the first World Cup race ever at Livigno, Italy), a potential all-Swiss podium (Alexis Monney, von Allmen, and Odermatt) was broken up by a (relatively narrow) first ever super-G victory for Austria's Schwarz, who had won the giant slalom just six days prior at Alta Badia; the victory moved him ahead of Haugan and into second place overall behind Odermatt.^[22] Returning from the New Year's break, the men began a series of five slaloms in five weeks with a night slalom in Madonna di Campiglio, Italy, which this time was won by Noël, who came from behind to edge Finland's Eduard Hallberg and thus trail Haugen by only three points for the discipline lead.^[23] The next week, in the first of two technical races (a GS) at Adelboden, Switzerland, Odermatt built a half-second lead over Braathen on the first run and matched Braathen's time on the second, taking both the win (his fifth straight in the GS there) and the discipline lead, once again restoring him to the lead in all three of his disciplines.^[24] The next day, France's Rassat claimed his second victory of the season in the slalom, edging out two Norwegians (McGrath and Henrik Kristoffersen) for the win – with Braathen, who finished fourth, taking over second place overall behind Odermatt.^[25]

The next two weeks featured the two classics, the Lauberhorn ski races at Wengen, Switzerland and the Hahnenkamm Races in Kitzbühel, Austria, with each week including a downhill, a Super-G, and a slalom. As usual, the Wengen races came first, and the first race, the super-G, took place in bright sunshine, which led to melting snow, and the first racer down the course – Giovanni Franzoni of Italy – set the fastest time for his first World Cup win, with the other two podium finishers starting 4th (Stefan Babinsky of Austria, his first World Cup podium) and 8th (von Allmen) as the conditions continued to deteriorate.^[26] The next day, the downhill was run on a shortened course due to high winds, but Odermatt dominated to win his fourth straight downhill at Wengen, with Kriechmayr (0.79 sec) his closest challenger and Franzoni (0.9 sec) claiming third, thereby increasing Odermatt's overall lead to over 550 points.^[27] In the third race, McGrath repeated his slalom victory there from 2025, beating his good friend (with birthdays only two days apart) and former Norwegian teammate Braathen by almost half a second, which propelled him into third overall, behind Odermatt and Braathen.^[28] The following weekend at Kitzbühel, the super-G was again run first, and Odermatt barely edged his teammate von Allmen by 0.03 seconds for his 53rd career World Cup win, in what turned out to be a close race all the way down to Franzoni in 12th, just 0.66 seconds behind Odermatt.^[29] But Franzoni got revenge the next day in the legendary downhill, edging Odermatt by 0.07 to win, and then dedicating the victory to his late friend and teammate – and roommate at Kitzbühel last year – Matteo Franzoso, who was killed in a training crash in Chile in September 2025,>|^[30] Finally, in the slalom, the home country's Manuel Feller came from fourth after the first run to overtake leader Loïc Meillard and save Austrian honor for the weekend.^[31]

Two days after Kitzbühel, and less than two weeks before the Winter Olympics, came two nighttime technical races under the lights at nearby Schladming. The giant slalom 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.^[32] The next night's slalom turned into an all-Norwegian battle between McGrath and Kristoffersen, with last year's discipline champion Kristoffersen coming from behind on the second run to claim his first victory of the season, while McGrath grabbed a one-point lead over Braathen in the discipline race.^[33] Finally, in the last race before the Olympics, von Allmen dominated the downhill at Crans Montana, Switzerland, defeating runner-up Dominik Paris of Italy by about two-thirds of a second for his second straight victory on the course.^[34]

The late season (post-Olympics to finals)

In the first post-Olympic race, a downhill at Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Germany), Odermatt led a Swiss sweep of the podium, edging Monney by .04 seconds for his fourth downhill win of the season and leaving him 687 points up on Braathen with just nine races remaining in the season.^[42] The next day, the super-G at Garmisch was cancelled due to persistent fog, which affected the course even after the start gate was lowered, and was rescheduled for 13 March at Courchevel (France), to precede the downhill and super-G already scheduled there on 14–15 March.^[43] The first giant slalom after the Olympics, in Kranjska Gora (Slovenia), had a very similar result to the Olympic race, 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.^[44] In the slalom, Olympic champion Meillard skied out on the first run, while McGrath barely managed to hold on to his first-run lead for a victory on the melting mountainside (with temperatures in the 50s on the second run), edging his teammate Kristoffersen by .01 seconds and his childhood friend Braathen by .04 seconds, thus giving McGrath a 41-point lead over Braathen heading into the discipline finals.^[45]

In the first race (a downhill) of the last weekend before the finals, at Courchevel (France), Odermatt, who was third, thus clinched both the discipline title (with an over-200 point lead with one race left)) and the overall title (with an over-600 point lead with six races left), his fifth straight (leaving him second, behind only Marcel Hirscher (eight) among male World Cup racers); in the race itself, Kriechmayr edged Franzoni to become the first Austrian to win a downhill since Kriechmayr last did it three years prior (15 March 2023).^[46] However, the rescheduled super-G the next day had to be canceled due to continuing heavy snowfall and fog, and this time it was not rescheduled and thus canceled.^[47] Then the second super-G, which was to take place the next day, also had to be canceled after the snowfall continued overnight until after 6 AM, which left the course with a powder covering of dead snow that was unsuitable for racing, thus giving Odermatt the super-G discipline title for the fourth straight season.^[48]