While the athletes chase gold on the slopes, another race takes place among the corridors of the Olympic Village and in the streets of the city: the one to grab the most beautiful, rarest or most significant pin. Pin trading — the art of exchanging personalized pins — is a tradition that has accompanied the Games for over a century, and at Milano-Cortina 2026 it is more alive than ever.
View this post on Instagram
A hundred year long history
The origins of this custom date back to the 1924 Paris Games, when athletes in the Olympic Village began exchanging small objects as a sign of friendship and remembrance. Since then the practice has never stopped, indeed it has transformed into a real cultural phenomenon. Today the most coveted are the limited editions and the so-called NOC Pins, i.e. the pins produced by the individual National Olympic Committees: pieces that are often difficult to find, which the most expert collectors can recognize at a glance.
Where to Find Olympic Pins: The Official Olympic Pin Trading Center
For those who want to immerse themselves in pin mania without relying on the luck of chance encounters, there is only one point of reference: the Official Olympic Pin Trading Center, hosted in via Carlo De Cristoforis 1 in Milan and sponsored by Warner Bros. It is the official space dedicated to the exchange and purchase of Olympic pins, frequented every day by collectors, enthusiasts and the simply curious who want to take home a piece of Milano-Cortina 2026. Here you can find the official pins of the Games, the 400 limited editions dedicated to individual days of competition and, above all, you meet people who have cultivated this passion for decades – some even since the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics – with collections that tell the story of the Games pin after pin.
Pin trading is not limited to spontaneous meetings between athletes, fans and volunteers. The Official Olympic Pin Trading Center has been opened in Milan in via Carlo De Cristoforis 1, with the support of Warner Bros., a space designed specifically for those who want to purchase official pins, discover the 400 editions dedicated to individual competition days and interact with collectors from every corner of the world. Olympic brands and sponsors are also hosting sales and giveaways in their spaces, further fueling the hunt.
When artificial intelligence comes into play
Tradition meets technology: Alibaba, global partner of the Olympic Movement, has installed an intelligent station for exchanging pins inside the Village. The system allows athletes to access a shared catalog of pins, expanding the possibilities for exchange far beyond what could be found through word of mouth alone.
The most exclusive piece of all
Of all the pins in circulation, only one is truly unrepeatable. Each torchbearer who carried the Olympic Flame for its 200 meters received a blue pin with the Milano-Cortina 2026 logo, made from the same diameter as the “Essential” Torch and designed to fit into the hole at its base. An object that cannot be bought, cannot be found in any trading center and is not mass-produced: there is exactly one for each bearer of the flame, and this makes it perhaps the most precious souvenir of the entire edition of the Games.
