Meet 2026 Olympics mascots Milo and Tina : NPR

Tina, left, and Milo, proper, are the official mascots of the 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, named after the host cities of Milan and Cortina.

Gabriel Bouys/AFP through Getty Images

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Gabriel Bouys/AFP through Getty Images

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For a long time, every Olympic and Paralympic Games has been represented by a mascot of some kind, with various receptions from the general public — from Atlanta’s much-maligned “Izzy” in 1996 to Beijing’s beloved 2022 panda to the divisive, big-eyed hats of Paris 2024.

Taking up the mantle for 2026 are Milo and Tina, a pair of scarf-wearing sibling stoats — or, as they’re referred to as within the U.S., short-haired weasels.

The two are named after the Winter Games’ two host cities, Milan (Milano) and Cortina d’Ampezzo, and are described by organizers because the “first openly Gen Z mascots.”

“Our stoats are two cheerful and easy-going teenagers, energetic, determined and strong-willed, sometimes charmingly irreverent towards adults and eager to assert their role as protagonists in the world to come,” the Milano Cortina organizing committee wrote.

You can inform them aside by their coats and backstories.

Meet Tina and Milo 

Tina, the Olympics mascot, is cream-colored with a brown-tipped tail. She is described as a “creative, down-to-earth type who lives in the city and loves to experience shows and concerts” and is “in awe of the power of beauty and its ability to transform.”

“I like to explore, to try new things, to change,” she says in her bio. “Every winter, however, nothing can keep me from returning to my beloved mountains to have fun with my brother and friends.”

Milo, the Paralympics mascot, is brown with a white tummy. He lives within the mountains and likes to play sensible jokes, frolic within the snow and invent musical devices in his spare time, organizers say. He was born with no paw, however realized to stroll utilizing his tail.

“It was never a big problem for me, perhaps because I was always taught that obstacles, if you take a good look at them and understand how to approach them, become super trampolines!” his bio reads.

Milo and Tina plushies had been on show in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy as early as November.

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Ryan Pierse/Getty Images

How they received the gig

Mascots are the ambassadors of the Games, welcoming athletes and spectators to the host nation whereas selling its id and values on-line and overseas. It’s a giant resolution. And for these Games, it began with Italian schoolkids.

As a part of the creation course of, Italy’s Ministry of Education invited main and secondary college college students to submit concepts for the mascots — and received over 1,600 entries.

It polled the public on its two shortlisted concepts: a pair of flowers (an edelweiss and a snowdrop) on a journey from the mountain to the town, the creation of scholars in Lombardy, and the sporty stoats with Olympic desires, courtesy of scholars within the Calabria area.

Milo and Tina had been formally unveiled to the public in February 2024, practically two years to the day earlier than the Olympics opening ceremony in Milan. And they weren’t alone: Organizers determined they’d be accompanied by six little snowdrop sidekicks often called The Flo, flowers symbolizing rebirth and impressed by the competition runner-up.

Stoats 101

A stoat within the wild.

Silas Stein/dpa through Reuters

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Silas Stein/dpa through Reuters

Organizers say stoats are the “ideal animals to embody the contemporary Italian spirit” guiding the Games, citing their liveliness, agility and velocity.

“They are curious by nature, have the surprising ability to change the colour of their fur according to the seasons, and the resilience necessary to adapt to a challenging habitat such as the mountains,” they wrote. “They will be the ones leading us to a future that is respectful of the environment and of differences, ever more sustainable and brighter.”

They belong to the mustelid household, which incorporates weasels, otters, ferrets, badgers and wolverines (however no longer skunks, who had been reclassified primarily based on rising genetic proof within the Nineties).

Stoats are native to Eurasia and North America and will be discovered within the Italian Alps, normally by the name ermine, which refers to their white winter coats. In hotter months, they’ve mild brown fur with a white stomach, neck, toes and chin.

The year-round black tips about their tails had been used to embellish rugs and robes for royalty for hundreds of years. The U.S. National Park Service (NPS) says weasels had been thought of an “unbesmirchable symbol of purity” in Europe for generations earlier than the phrase took on its “undeserved duplicitous reputation.”

The portray Lady with an Ermine by Leonardo da Vinci provides an instance of stoats’ affiliation with the Aristocracy.

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Markus Schreiber/AP

“I doubt anyone has ever been thanked for hurling the epithet ‘weasel’ at someone. But maybe they should be,” it continues. “The weasel family is highly resourceful, ambitious, courageous, agile, energetic, and downright adorable in many instances.”

Stoats could also be recognized for his or her long-necked, small and slender our bodies, however can tackle prey more than five times their very own dimension. They eat virtually the whole lot: rodents, birds, mice, voles, eggs, small snakes, bugs and extra. But stoats’ most popular prey is rabbits, they usually have a singular manner of trapping them: the ability of dance.

“It is thought that the exaggerated twisting, hopping, and darting about disorients and perhaps even hypnotizes some prey species,” the NPS says. “The weasel gets ever closer until it is too late for the prey to get away, with the last hop landing on top of the animal quickly followed by the killing bite.”

Here’s an example (warning: the dance works).