One of the six sports contested at the first Winter Games in 1924, Nordic combined combines ski jumping with a cross-country race. Athletes first compete in ski jumping, on a normal or large hill, and then race a cross-country course to determine the winner. 

There are three Nordic combined events at the Olympics: the individual Gundersen normal hill/10km race, the individual Gundersen large hill/10km, and the large hill/2x7.5km race, which is a team event.  

Nordic combined will take place from Feb. 11 to Feb. 19 during the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics. 

Because ski jumping and cross-country skiing are graded on two different scales (points vs. time), Nordic combined used a standardized conversion system to evaluate both events using the same scale, called the Gundersen method. 

The Gundersen method translates the points an athlete earns in ski jumping to time. After the ski jumping competition, an athlete’s jump points are converted into time penalties. In the two individual events, one point equals four seconds, while one point is equal to 1.33 seconds in the team event.

The winner of the ski jumping competition starts first in the cross-country race. The other athletes then start the race in a staggered format in order of the results from the ski jumping competition.

Typically, the first athlete to cross the finish line in the cross-country race is the competition’s overall winner.

Historically, Norway has dominated Nordic combined competitions. At the Olympics, the Scandinavian nation has claimed 35 total medals — almost twice as much as Germany’s runner-up total of 18. But the country’s prowess took a hit with the recent retirement of Norwegian Jarl Magnus Riiber, an 11-time world champion who has won five of the last seven World Cup season titles, and Jorgen Graabak, who leads the Olympic gold medal count in the sport with four. 

Germany’s Vinzenz Geiger and Julian Schmid now command the sport, placing 1st and 4th, respectively, at last year’s World Cup circuit. Johannes Lamparter of Austria, the third-most successful Olympic nation, placed 3rd.

Nordic combined will take place across two venues during the 2026 Winter Olympics. 

Ski jumping for Nordic combined will be contested at the Ski Jumping Arena in Predazzo, a village in northern Italy.

The cross-country portion of the event will take place at the Fabio Canal cross-country and biathlon center. The venue is in the municipality of Tesero, in northern Italy.

Nordic combined at the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics will take place from Feb. 11 to Feb. 19, beginning with the individual normal hill/10k and ending with the team large hill/2x7.5km sprint.

See the full competition schedule below:

Stay tuned on the NBC Olympics schedule page for updates on how to watch.

All times are in EST.

The United States has not earned an Olympic medal of any color in Nordic combined since the 2010 Vancouver Games, where the country exploded for four podium finishes and snapped its 86-year medal drought in the sport. In Milan Cortina, two athletes will attempt to end that drought: Ben Loomis and Niklas Malacinski.

Loomis, 27, will make his third Olympic appearance in Milan Cortina. A longtime fixture of the U.S. Nordic combined scene, Loomis has been on the national team for 10 years. During his Olympic debut in 2018, Loomis placed 40th in the large hill/10km, 41st in the normal hill/10k, and 10th (of 10) in the team event. He improved significantly by 2022, landing 19th in the large hill/10km, 15th in the normal hill/10km, and 6th in the team event. 

Loomis enters the Olympics as the reigning national champion in the compact/large hill and as the World No. 41 overall. 

The 22-year-old Malacinski is one of the 48 Olympic rookies named to the various teams under the U.S. Ski & Snowboard umbrella. A 2024 national champion, Malacinski finished the 2023-24 (25th) and 2024-25 (26th) seasons as the top-ranked American man on the World Cup circuit, skiing to his career-best finish (13th) in November 2024. With four top-20 finishes through the first four World Cups this year, he is the only American man ranked inside the top 30 (29th).