The Venice Carnival has announced its theme for 2026 as “Olympics – The Origins of Play”, paying tribute to the Milan–Cortina Winter Olympic Games taking place in Italy that same year.

From 31 January to 17 February, Venice will host an 18-day Carnival, with events unfolding across the city’s canals, bridges, and squares. As every year, visitors arriving during the Carnival season will experience a rich and varied programme featuring water parades, allegorical processions, masked balls, and nighttime shows.

The image featured on the official poster is inspired by Gabriel Bella’s painting “The Fat Thursday Festival in the Piazzetta”, which depicts 18th-century Venice and visually conveys what this year’s Carnival aims to revive: celebration as a collective practice rooted in gesture, competition, and participation.

According to the organisers, the theme evokes mythology and the harmony between body and mind, while also recalling Venice’s past, when the Carnival served as a grand stage for contests, acrobatic performances, and collective displays of skill — a true forerunner of the modern Olympic spirit.