Welcome to the 2026 Fantasy Winter Olympics

Welcome to the 2026 Fantasy Winter Olympics! If you're new to Fantasy Olympics this year - let's start with a brief introduction:

This is a unique Fantasy Olympics format we've been developing for almost 15 years that allows for participants to spend as much or as little time/effort as they'd like. If you want to spend a few minutes drafting countries and then have something extra to cheer for when you're watching Figure Skating or Hockey in February - then you're in the right place.

If you like in-depth research of Olympic events so you know the dark horse medal contenders for Mixed Doubles Curling and know the upset potential for the podium in Men's Biathlon, this is also the place for you.

As a benefit to all of us, here is a review of how it all works:

Fantasy Olympics consists of two main activities, a country draft over the week or so leading up to the Olympics and a daily event choice during the Olympics.

• The Country Draft (Pre-Olympics) - Over the next week or so leading up to the opening ceremony of the Olympics (February 6th), there will be a country draft where each player will select up to 6 countries. The countries you draft will become your team and you score points for their medal successes in selected events.

• The Daily Event Selection (During the Olympics) - During the Olympics, each player will independently choose an event for each day from a menu of 3 pre-selected Olympic events. The player will then score for all of their drafted countries who medal in that event. As we've done in previous years, you'll have a google submission form which will allow you to select all your events in advance (in case you have a busy February, or just don't want to worry about it). That form will also allow you to change your event selection if you change your mind prior to the day of the event.

 

The event selection is essentially a curated sampling of about 1/2 of the entire Winter Olympic Games schedule and it is recommended to take into consideration the Fantasy Olympics schedule while drafting countries.

The Details

Fantasy Olympics uses a simple scoring system and to help better illustrate the scoring, let's jump into the Daily Event Selection first, then we'll come back and take a look at the Country Draft.

The Daily Event Selection:

• Each day of the Olympics will have three events available to select from.
• Each player will select one of the three events for that day, scoring only for the event they select.
• Each player will score for any and all of their countries that medal in the event they select.
•  Gold = 6 points
•  Silver = 4 points
•  Bronze = 2 points
• In the instance that a single country earns multiple medals in an event, any additional medals for that country score at half value.

Let's look at some scoring examples from past Olympics:

 

 

 2022 Men's Team Ski Jumping Medalists:

•   🇦🇹 Austria    (Alex)
•   🇸🇮 Slovenia  (Angela)
•   🇩🇪 Germany (Alex)

In 2022, Alex drafted Austria and Germany for the entire Winter Olympics. Angela drafted Slovenia.

• Alex selected this event and scored a total of 8 points 
• +6 points for  Austria's Gold medal
• +2 points for  Germany's Bronze medal.
• Angela would score 4 points had she selected this event, however she selected a different event and thus scored no points for Slovenia's Silver medal here.

Instead - Angela selected a different event on the same day instead - one where another of Angela's countries, the USA was favored.

 

2022 Women's Monobob (Bobsleigh) Medalists:

•  Kaillie Humphries      USA     (Angela)
•  Elana Meyers Taylor  USA     (Angela)
•  Christine de Bruin      Canada (Daniel) 

In this event individual athletes compete for the medals, rather than teams from specific countries but it works the same way. Angela doesn't have to worry about which specific athlete from the USA wins Gold, she scores for all medalists from all of her countries. However for competitive balance purposes, after the first medal a country wins, any additional medals from that same country score half the normal amount.

• Angela scored 8 points for selecting this event.
• A full +6 points for  USA's Gold Medal
• An additional +2 points for  USA's Silver Medal
• Daniel also selected this event and he earned +2 points for  Canada's Bronze Medal

Team Events:

The event schedule focuses on a lot of events that take place over the course of a single day. Some team events like Curling and Ice Hockey span the duration of the Olympics as they consist of many matches and eventually a knock-out tournament bracket:

• Men's Ice Hockey
• Women's Ice Hockey
• Mixed Double's Curling
• Men's Curling
• Women's Curling 

These events are also scored during Fantasy Olympics and at a premium. You don't need to do anything extra for these events (other than draft countries that have medal winning potential) and they reward slightly more points to countries that medal:

•  Team Gold = 10 points
•  Team Silver = 6 points
•  Team Bronze = 3 points

The Country Draft:

• There will be six rounds of the draft, each player will select up to six countries.
• First round draft order will be generated via random number generator.
• It is a snake-style draft (it will reverse order for the second round).
• For the speed and efficiency of the draft - players cannot trade draft picks or countries.

We've always used a straightforward draft method - for each of your draft picks you may select any country that hasn't been selected yet. If you're comfortable with the rules explanation so far - you can stop here and plan your draft with that in mind (and you'll do quite well).

For those who enjoy the evolving experiment of Fantasy Winter Olympics we have a new addition to the rules this time around...

(NEW in 2026!) Re-Draft Rules (A country can be drafted a second time, but it comes with a cost)

(Preamble) The Winter Olympics has fewer countries compete than the Summer Olympics and even fewer countries that win medals with any sort of consistency. Historically the Winter Olympics is about 1/3rd of the size in both the total number of events and the number of countries that medal. This makes it a tough format for Fantasy where it can be fairly top-heavy in terms of country scoring potential in a fantasy format.

So what is the Re-Draft?

When selecting a country in the draft, you may always select a not-yet-drafted country as normal. However if someone has taken a country that would really work well alongside your other countries you can redraft that country at a cost:

• If the country you wish to redraft is:
• Taken in the current round, you would swap draft pick positions in the following round with the player who originally drafted that country.
• Example: We're in the 2nd round and that country you want to redraft was taken right before you in the 2nd round - When you redraft that country, you would (as compensation to them) swap draft picks with that player in the 3rd round, and they would go before you.) 
•  Taken in the previous round, you forfeit your next round draft pick.
• Example: With my 2nd round draft pick, I decide to redraft a country that was taken in the 1st round. I forfeit my 3rd round draft pick and will pick next in the 4th round.

So what do you get? Well, both players will score normally that country for the Winter Olympics Daily Events (where most of the scoring occurs). Also there is a slight disadvantage to picking a country after someone else has - Only the first player to pick a country will score for Team Event points for that country.

• (i.e. only the first player to select Canada will score for Canada's medals in Curling and/or Ice Hockey, but any player who selects Canada will score for Canada's medals everywhere else).

Other Redraft Rules to note:

• A country can only be selected two times in total (Drafted once, and then Redrafted once).
• The same player cannot draft + redraft the same country (it would provide no benefit)
• Redrafting is not possible in the final round of the draft (as you have no remaining draft capital to give up as compensation).