Six sports. Seventy-nine gold medals. Ten days across the Italian Dolomites, Milan, and Verona.

The 2026 Winter Paralympics run March 6 through March 15. Whether you're planning to watch every session on Peacock or just trying to explain to your family what Paralympic sport actually looks like, here's a clear, event-by-event breakdown of everything on the program.

Para Alpine Skiing

Para alpine skiing athletes race down steep mountain slopes at speeds exceeding 100 kilometers per hour (over 60 miles per hour), in some of the same events you'd find at the Winter Olympics. The sport has been part of every Winter Paralympics since the very first one in 1976.

Five events are on the program: downhill, super-G, giant slalom, slalom, and combined. Athletes compete in three categories based on their disability:

• Standing athletes have physical impairments and ski upright.
• Seated athletes use a monoski, a seat mounted on a single ski that allows full-speed alpine technique from a sitting position.
• Visually impaired athletes ski with a sighted guide who communicates directions via radio in real time.

A visually impaired athlete descends the same course at the same speeds, guided through turns and jumps by a partner skiing ahead of them, transmitting voice directions as they go.

Races take place at the Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre in Cortina d'Ampezzo.

Para Biathlon

If you've never watched para biathlon, this is the one to put on your calendar.

Para biathlon combines cross-country skiing across three or five laps with precision target shooting at 10 meters. Athletes ski to the range, stop, take aim, and fire. Every missed shot adds time or an extra penalty loop, depending on the format.

The element that sets Paralympic biathlon apart from its Olympic counterpart: for visually impaired athletes, the rifles are fitted with an acoustic targeting system. As the shooter aligns on the target, an electronic tone rises in pitch. When centered on the bullseye, the tone is highest. Athletes learn to read that sound the way sighted shooters read the sight picture. It's a remarkable technology, and once you know it's there, watching visually impaired athletes shoot becomes something different entirely.

Eighteen events are scheduled at the Tesero Cross-Country Skiing Stadium in Val di Fiemme.

Para Cross-Country Skiing

Para cross-country is the endurance backbone of the Nordic program, sharing the Val di Fiemme venue with biathlon.

Athletes compete using adapted equipment: sit-skis for those who can't ski standing, sighted guides for visually impaired competitors, and a classification system that organizes competitors with different impairments into fair groups. Physical impairment classes run under LW classifications, while visually impaired athletes compete under B1 through B3 categories based on the degree of their vision loss.

The U.S. Para Nordic team had one of its best World Cup seasons on record heading into these Games, 51 medals in the 2025-26 season including 24 gold, and will be one of the strongest national programs on the snow.

Para Ice Hockey

Four words: sleds, blades, sticks, chaos.

Para ice hockey is full-contact, full-speed, and built for players who don't have full use of their legs. Players sit on specially designed sledges fitted with two blades, which sit low enough that the puck passes underneath. To move, they use two sticks: one end has spikes that dig into the ice for propulsion, the other end has a blade for controlling the puck. The rules closely mirror traditional hockey.

The sport made its Paralympic debut at Lillehammer 1994 and has been one of the most popular spectator events at the Games ever since.

Eight teams are competing this year: Italy, Canada, China, Czechia, Germany, Japan, Slovakia, and the United States. Games take place at the Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena and will be loud.

If you're watching with kids who play hockey, this is the one to watch together.

Para Snowboard

The newest addition to the program, and the one that attracts the youngest audience.

Para snowboard made its Paralympic debut at Sochi 2014 and has grown quickly since. Two main competition formats:

• Snowboard Cross puts athletes on a course of obstacles, jumps, rollers, and sharp turns, racing to the finish.
• Banked Slalom is a timed downhill slalom through banked gates, where line choice and form matter as much as pure speed.

Eight medal events are scheduled at the Cortina Para Snowboard Park. The athletes here tend to have lower-limb impairments or arm differences, and the progression of the sport over just three Paralympic cycles has been remarkable, both in the level of competition and in how mainstream the coverage has become.

Team USA's Noah Elliott, a two-time Paralympic medalist in his first two Games, is back for a third.

Wheelchair Curling

Everything here is strategy. No sprinting, no crashing: just precision and patience, and it's more gripping than it sounds.

Wheelchair curling has been on the Paralympic program since Torino 2006. Players deliver 19.1-kilogram granite stones from a stationary wheelchair, using a long delivery stick rather than the sliding release you'd see in Olympic curling. The key difference: there's no sweeping. In traditional curling, sweepers can significantly alter the path of the stone after it's released. In wheelchair curling, once the stone is thrown, it travels wherever it's going. That places the full burden of accuracy on the delivery itself.

The sport is mixed-gender at the team level, with men and women competing together on the same squad.

At these Games, a mixed doubles format makes its Paralympic debut, the first time wheelchair curling has included a two-player discipline alongside the traditional team event. It's a meaningful expansion, and one that will shape how the sport develops through future Games.

How to Watch

NBC and Peacock are carrying coverage from Milan, with over 270 hours on Peacock. Use the official schedule at Olympics.com to plan which events to catch live. Para ice hockey and para alpine skiing tend to get the most primetime attention, but the Nordic events (especially biathlon) are worth seeking out on streaming.

The Games open March 6 in Verona.