As a handpicked audience arrived in Milan for the opening ceremony of the 2026 Winter Olympic Games last week, thousands of people mobilized against the gentrification and speculation accelerated by preparations for the event, the participation of Israeli competitors, and the presence of ICE agents. As is becoming customary in Italy, protesters were met with police violence during the demonstrations.

“[Prime Minister] Meloni says: ‘Those who protest against the Olympics are enemies of Italy.’” the network Unsustainable Olympics Committee (CIO) wrote. “We don’t know what ‘of Italy’ means here. But we do know that this government, one of the most servile toward Western autocracies such as Trump’s United States, is an enemy of those who live, work, study, and are exploited in Italy, who cannot pay rent and cannot afford healthcare.”

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The most recent wave of criticism against the Milan–Cortina Olympics broke out when, in the days surrounding the murder of Alex Pretti, reports emerged that immigration agents would be part of the delegation accompanying US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to the opening ceremony. Solidarity actions linked to the general strike in Minnesota were launched shortly afterward and continued, in various forms, into the first days of the Winter Olympics.

On February 6, before joining striking dockworkers in Italian ports, student collectives in Milan mobilized to denounce ICE violence in the US and demand the agents’ departure from the city. “Today we also took to the streets against the parade through our city of Vance and Rubio, who are directly responsible for the genocide in Palestine, the imperialist aggression against Venezuela, and [are part of] a process that created ICE, the US anti-immigration police,” the Milan chapter of Alternative Student Opposition (OSA) wrote on social media.

Rubio and Vance – just like the Israeli delegation – were met with boos during the opening ceremony. However, activists stressed that the opposition surrounding the event goes far beyond their presence. “On top of everything else, we are already seeing false opposition groups positioning themselves ahead of the upcoming elections,” OSA Milan added. “While they criticize the presence of ICE, they do not appear concerned about gentrification, no-go zones, or overbuilding.”

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Since the announcement of the Milan–Cortina Olympics, local housing groups, grassroots trade unions, and climate justice organizations have criticized the project for promoting land speculation, gentrification, and overdevelopment in a city that was already unaffordable for the working class. Today, dozens of Olympic-related construction projects remain unfinished, green areas have been devastated, and there is next to no prospect that the infrastructure will ever serve the public.

“The Milan–Cortina Winter Olympics are not a sporting event,” Potere al Popolo Milan warned at the end of January. “They are an economic and political operation that turns territories, people, and cities into commodities. A massive financial development project that enriches the few while dumping social, environmental, and human costs on the many.”

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“The Olympics are, in fact, the direct expression of an entire political class – from the Meloni government to the Sala city administration, passing through the Fontana regional government – which has turned them into an opportunity for exploitation, real estate and financial speculation, as well as for further legitimizing Zionism in this city,” OSA and Cambiare Rotta Milan echoed.

In fact, while athletes from Russia and Belarus were barred from participating, the organizing committee allowed Israeli competitors to take part, despite their public expressions of support for the genocide in Gaza. Several members of the Israeli team competing in bobsleigh – a discipline for which a new track was built at high cost and with significant environmental damage – have, according to local reports, even directly participated in Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) attacks on Gaza since October 7, 2023.

“Amid the unanimous silence of our political class,” Potere al Popolo concluded, “both in government and opposition, soldiers who served on the front lines in Gaza, proudly claiming responsibility for this crime on social media, have paraded around [Milan].”

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