What Milan-Cortina 2026 taught us about winter activations

The 2026 Winter Olympics are done, and the crowd was real: about 500,000 people came through the Fan Villages, 5.4 million turned up across the venues, fan zones and torch relay, and 2.6 billion followed along worldwide. More than 40 sponsors fought for that attention. The ones that landed all did the same thing: they gave people something personal to take home.

Where the crowd actually was

Most of the action sat outside the ticketed arenas, in six free Fan Villages across Milan, Cortina, Bormio, Livigno, Predazzo and Brunico, plus an Olympic Boulevard running through central Milan past the Duomo and the Sforza Castle. It filled fast, 100,000+ visitors in the first four days. If you were a sponsor, this is where you reached people.

The booths people lined up for gave them a keepsake

Check what the big names built. Coca-Cola's THE PEAK handed visitors a Coke can engraved with their own face and name, plus a photo with the Olympic Torch. Samsung set up an Olympic Victory Selfie station inside Samsung House. Alibaba's Wonder on Ice took a visitor's photo, built an AI avatar, and generated a short video starring that avatar.

Three different budgets, one playbook. Give a photo, walk away with a personalized branded thing you can keep and post. That keepsake is what pulled the line.

The houses went public

Access opened up too. Casa Italia let the public in for the first time, Omega ran its first winter house in a host city, the Dutch supporters' house returned as TeamNL House, and a dozen-plus national houses opened across Milan. Airbnb even sold 26 athlete-led experiences that kept selling after the closing ceremony. The takeaway from the trade press: experiential is now the center of Olympic sponsorship, and brands build these spaces to capture data and keep working long after the flame goes out.

And it wasn't only Italy. Team Canada threw a free FanFest in Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver and Montreal during the Games, with live screens, partner activations and fan photo experiences for people who never flew over. For a sponsor that's two crowds from one event: the host cities and the home-market fan zones.

This is exactly what an AI photo booth does

The whole pattern at Milan-Cortina, the engraved can, the avatar video, the selfie station, is what our booth is built for: a personalized, on-brand keepsake made on the spot. A guest steps up, the AI puts them in winter styling or on the podium, the sponsor's logo renders sharp on a locked template, and they leave with a printed card in a display case and a digital version for their phone. Nothing off-brand can come out, because the design is fixed before the first photo. Guest photos get deleted after the event.

It carries a real crowd. At a Lenovo activation in London we printed 800+ personalized cards in four hours. When Paramount+ ran an AI portrait booth at the Formula 1 Grand Prix, guests made 6,522 unique portraits across two cities. You don't need a castle and a full AI pavilion to get the Alibaba effect. You need the keepsake, and a booth delivers it.

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Next stop, the French Alps 2030

Milan-Cortina showed what fans line up for: a personal thing they can share. The Winter Games hit the French Alps in 2030, and the smart brands are deciding their keepsake now. Want to see what one looks like? Try the demo, then get in touch and we'll build the booth around your fan zone.