At previous Games, the men’s and women’s Alpine combined event would see each skiers compete in speed and technical races, with the quickest aggregate times determining the winner.

Austria’s Johannes Strolz and Switzerland’s Michelle Gisin raced the downhill and slalom courses before claiming the respective men’s and women’s Alpine combined titles at Beijing 2022.

At Milan Cortina 2026, there will be two athletes of the same gender representing a nation, with one specialist tackling the downhill run and the other taking on the slalom course.

The changes have been made after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Executive Board accepted proposals tabled by the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS).

The new version of Alpine combined was devised by the FIS Athletes' Committee.

The combined event first took place in the Winter Olympics in 1936, at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, when Alpine skiing made its first appearance at the Games.

It was dropped at the 1952 Winter Olympics but returned as a stand-alone Games event in 1988.

The IOC Executive Board said that the men's and women's Alpine combined events had only been included "provisionally" on the the Milan Cortina 2026 programme to allow the FIS "additional time to finalise its competition format proposal and collect feedback from the relevant stakeholders."

Alterations have also been made to the formats of Nordic combined and ski jumping while the IOC has announced that men and women will race the same distance across the cross-country skiing competition for the first time at Milan Cortina 2026.

During Beijing 2022, women competed over 10 kilometres for the individual classical, 15km for the skiathlon, 30km for the mass start and 4x5km for the relay, while the men raced 15km, 30km, 50km and 4x10km for those respective disciplines.

IOC sports director Kit McConnell declared the move as a "great step forward" towards gender equality in cross-country skiing.

The ski jumping team format has reduced from four athletes to two with competition held over three rounds.

In the first of those, only the best 12 teams will move forward to the second stage before the top eight will battle it out in the third and final round.

The Nordic combined men’s team format has also been cut from four athletes competing in a team Gundersen large hill/4x5km event to two tackling a team sprint large hill/2x7.5km competition.

Under the changes, each athlete will have one jump on the large hill before both alternating and skiing a 1.5km loop five times each.

The IOC Executive Board has also approved the qualification systems for biathlon, curling, figure skating, short-track speed skating and ski mountaineering.

No major changes have been made to the respective Beijing 2022 criteria aside from ski mountaineering which is a new sport that has been added to the programme for Milan Cortina 2026.

The IOC also announced that its Executive Board validated the proposal from Milan Cortina 2026 to move speed skating to Milan’s Fiera Milano Exhibition Centre from Baselga di Pinè and confirmed that ski mountaineering will take place in Bormio.