2026 Alpine Skiing World Cup – Men's slalom

In the opening slalom of the season in Levi, 2023 discipline 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, recorded the first World Cup victory ever for his new country and its one-man team.^[4] At the same time, six-time discipline 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.^[4] A week later, the second slalom, in Gurgl, Austria, produced a huge upset as 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.^[5] After a break while the World Cup series moved to North America, slalom resumed at Val d'Isère, France, where Norway's Timon Haugan, who had failed to podium the day before in giant slalom 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.^[6] 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 run for the victory, thus denying Noël a holiday-themed win, with McGrath's Norwegian teammate Haugan (fourth) retaining the discipline lead.^[7]

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.^[8] A week later in Adelboden, Switzerland, France's Rassat claimed his second victory of the season in the slalom, edging out two Norwegians (McGrath and Henrik Kristoffersen) for the win and claiming the lead in the discipline himself by 26 points over Noël, as Haugen failed to finish the first run.^[9] In the third race, at Wengen, Switzerland, McGrath repeated his 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 a narrow discipline lead, now followed by Braathen, Noël, Rassat, and Haugan, with only 42 points separating the five of them.^[10] But the next week, in the slalom at Kitzbühel, Austria, 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; meanwhile, when McGrath failed to finish his first run, Braathen, who finished fourth, took over the discipline lead.^[11] Three days later, about a week before the start of the Olympics, a night slalom under the lights at Schlamding 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.^[12]

The first run at the Winter Olympics started in a light snowfall, which quickly turned into a blizzard with low visibility, allowing McGrath, the first skier, to build a lead of 0.59 over Meillard, the second skier, who built another 0.35 over the next-best skier, Fabio Gstrein of Austria, with only seven skiers within two seconds of McGrath's lead and 11 of the top 30 and 49 out of 96 total failing to finish the run; however, McGrath straddled a gate and skied out early in the (clear) second run, allowing Meillard to complete his set of Olympic medals at these games with a gold medal (to join his silver from the team combined and his bronze from the giant slalom). Gstrein, who matched Meillard for the best second-run time, won the silver for the first medal for the Austrian men's Alpine skiing team first individual medal of the games, and Kristoffersen, who posted the third-best second-run time, took the bronze for his second career Olympic medal.^[13] Back on the World Cup circuit at Kranjska Gora (Slovenia), the situation was reversed: 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), 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 finals.^[14]

The World Cup finals in the discipline are scheduled to take place on Wednesday, 25 March 2026 on the Olympialøypa course at Hafjell, near Lillehammer, Norway.^[15] Only the top 25 skiers in the World Cup downhill discipline and the winner of the 2026 FIS Junior World Championships in the discipline (Giuliano Fux of Switzerland), 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 (Marco Schwarz of Austria, discipline champion in 2021) registered, as well as 24 of the 25 qualified competitors (all except the injured Manuel Feller of Austria) and Fux, so the field was set at 26. By the final event at finals, the home country's lack of success during these finals had become a storyline but was decisively ended by the slalom results; first, Norway's Haugan, who had defeated Meillard at Val d'Isère in December, did it again at finals for his second win of the season, giving the fans a home race winner.^[16] Then, the overall season-long battle between Norway's McGrath, his close friend (and former Norwegian) Braathen (41 points behind), and France's Noël (77 points behind), which would have been over had McGrath placed no worse then third at finals, instead accelerated when McGrath had a poor second run, creating an opening for Braathen, who failed to take advantage of it by skiing out early in his own second run, while Noël, who then needed a victory to have a shot, instead struggled near the end of his second run, thus allowing McGrath (who ended up eighth) to claim the title, giving the fans a home crystal globe winner as well.^[16]

• 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 giant slalom
• World Cup scoring system