Italy’s Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics wrapped up on 23 February with a spectacular closing ceremony in Verona’s 2,000-year-old Arena. While athletes waved their farewells under confetti and operatic arias, airport and rail operators were bracing for the biggest single-day exodus the country has seen since pre-pandemic times. Over 12,000 accredited athletes, officials and media representatives were expected to depart Italy within 48 hours, alongside tens of thousands of foreign spectators whose stays had been staggered during the 17-day event. Airports in Milan, Venice and Verona added extra passport-control booths and temporarily reassigned check-in counters to charter flights laid on by national Olympic committees. Trenitalia scheduled 20 additional high-speed services on the Venice–Milan and Milan–Bergamo corridors to redistribute passenger loads away from packed mountain stations.
![Winter Olympics Close in Verona, Triggering Post-Games Travel Surge Across Italy]()
For visitors already planning return trips for the Paralympics or future business, VisaHQ can streamline the paperwork well before you reach the EES kiosks. The company’s online platform (https://www.visahq.com/italy/) walks travelers through Schengen visa requirements, appointment bookings and courier options, ensuring that passports and supporting documents are in order long before take-off.
Logistics were complicated by winter-sports equipment: Malpensa Airport reported that skis and oversized bags accounted for almost 18 percent of total outbound luggage on the morning of 23 February. To avoid bottlenecks, authorities authorised “Olympic lanes” at the land border with Switzerland and fast-track lanes at road tollgates around Cortina. Italy’s border police said it waived secondary checks for passport holders pre-cleared through the EU’s Entry/Exit System pilot, reducing average clearance time per athlete to under two minutes. For Italian business-travel managers the Games offered a real-time stress test of the country’s new EES kiosks, set to become mandatory for all non-EU visitors in autumn 2026. Travel-management companies reported that the biometric gates processed holders of the new French and U.S. e-passports “without a single failure”—an encouraging sign for companies that rotate staff through Italy on short notice. With the Olympic flame now extinguished, organisers shift to the Paralympics (6–15 March). The Ministry of the Interior confirmed that temporary Schengen-wide police powers, including the right to reinstate internal border checks, will stay in force until 20 March. Multinationals should therefore plan for potential spot checks on executive travel, especially on the Austria and Slovenia frontiers.
For visitors already planning return trips for the Paralympics or future business, VisaHQ can streamline the paperwork well before you reach the EES kiosks. The company’s online platform (https://www.visahq.com/italy/) walks travelers through Schengen visa requirements, appointment bookings and courier options, ensuring that passports and supporting documents are in order long before take-off.
Logistics were complicated by winter-sports equipment: Malpensa Airport reported that skis and oversized bags accounted for almost 18 percent of total outbound luggage on the morning of 23 February. To avoid bottlenecks, authorities authorised “Olympic lanes” at the land border with Switzerland and fast-track lanes at road tollgates around Cortina. Italy’s border police said it waived secondary checks for passport holders pre-cleared through the EU’s Entry/Exit System pilot, reducing average clearance time per athlete to under two minutes. For Italian business-travel managers the Games offered a real-time stress test of the country’s new EES kiosks, set to become mandatory for all non-EU visitors in autumn 2026. Travel-management companies reported that the biometric gates processed holders of the new French and U.S. e-passports “without a single failure”—an encouraging sign for companies that rotate staff through Italy on short notice. With the Olympic flame now extinguished, organisers shift to the Paralympics (6–15 March). The Ministry of the Interior confirmed that temporary Schengen-wide police powers, including the right to reinstate internal border checks, will stay in force until 20 March. Multinationals should therefore plan for potential spot checks on executive travel, especially on the Austria and Slovenia frontiers.
