Frozen in time: The most iconic images from the 2026 Winter Olympics

Almost every moment of the Winter Olympics was available to watch — streamed live or repackaged in primetime. But even with wall-to-wall video and viral clips, it's often the iconic stills captured by Getty Images that will live forever in our memories. Their photographers spent weeks preparing ahead of the Games before documenting every defining second. For one final look back, a dozen Getty photographers shared their favorite images from the 2026 Winter Olympics and the stories behind each unforgettable shot.

Yuto Totsuka, men’s snowboard halfpipe, Team Japan

Photographed by David Ramos: I found this angle during warm ups before competition and took note of where exactly each athlete tended to throw their tricks in the section of the pipe I was assigned to cover. By the final round, the contest had tightened into a real dual between Australia’s Scottie James and Japan’s Yuto Totsuka.

I moved straight to the spot marked in my notes and committed to waiting for the trick to happen in that window. What makes this frame for me is the “floating” feeling — Totsuka suspended in space stacked above the spectators’ faces, where you can sense their astonishment and scale of the moment. The challenge was trusting the preparation under pressure: staying patient, holding composition, and letting the jump come to me rather than chasing it. — David Ramos

Jack Hughes, men's ice hockey, Team USA

Photographed by Elsa: Jack Hughes was the hero of the night for Team USA. This was a huge matchup against Team Canada, and like the perfect script, it went into overtime. Jack Hughes scored the game-winning goal and Team USA is taking home the gold in men’s ice hockey. This picture has made the rounds for sure, but what I love about it is that he is celebrating and waving to his family. Draped in the American flag, smiling with his bloody mouth and lip from battle.—Elsa

Anze Lanisek, ski jumping, Team Slovenia

Photographed by Alex Slitz: Stationed at the top of the hill and pre-focused on the crowd, I waited for each athlete to leave the in-run, listening for the subtle cue before tracking their flight through the frame. Using a long telephoto lens required precise alignment—the skier and spectators had to converge in a split second for the image to come together.—Alex Slitz

Nicole Burger, skeleton, Team South Africa

Photographed by Richard Heathcote: This image captures Nicole Burger of Team South Africa competing during the women’s skeleton heat. Set beneath a dramatic mountain backdrop, the scene unfolds in the deep blue of twilight, that fleeting space between night and day. Fans, silhouetted against the floodlit ice, line the track, adding a human layer to the alpine stillness as they cheer the slider down the course. — Richard Heathcote

Anna Weidel, biathlon, Team Germany

Photographed by Harry How: I think the oversize of the Olympic rings compared to the biathlete is what grabbed me in framing this picture. The window to get the biathlete in the frame with the rifle was very tight, so it took a lot more frames to get one I liked. —Harry How

Nozomi Maruyama, ski jumping, Team Japan

Photographed by Alex Pantling: This was my first day photographing at this Olympics and yet probably my favorite photo. Not all jumpers have goggles that are translucent, but the few that do end up making great graphic images. Nozomi Maruyama of Japan was practicing her take-off at the top of the jump when I grabbed this detailed image. —Alex Pantling

Ayaulym Amrenova, women's moguls, Team Kazakhstan

Photographed by Hannah Peters: We hadn't seen the sun for a few days and were hoping it would pop late afternoon at the moguls course. Fortunately, it appeared for five minutes during the women's moguls Final 1. I was able to work with where the light hit the bumps on the moguls course, creating nice shadows to work with. —Hannah Peters

Women's short track speed skating

Photographed by Jared C. Tilton: This is a moment of peak action captured using our overhead robotic cameras during the short track speed skating women's 500m race. During heat 3, Corinne Stoddard of Team USA, Arianna Sighel of Team Italy and Rika Kanai of Team Japan crashed, creating a domino-like situation. The aspect of motion and what’s going to happen next draws people to this image, along with the bird’s eye view above the ice. —Jared C. Tilton

Benjamin Karl, snowboarding, Team Austria

Photographed by David Ramos: This was the instant reaction after Benjamin Karl sealed the win in the men’s parallel giant slalom big final. He exploded with emotion—raw, unfiltered release. What stood out was how quickly the scene turned chaotic. He started stripping layers and roaring, and suddenly it wasn’t just about the athlete, but about the intensity of the moment. My priority was to keep a clean, unobstructed frame, so I kept sliding to my left as he moved, specifically to avoid the broadcast camera drifting into my line and blocking the peak expression. It was a fast, instinctive pivot (small footwork adjustments to protect the sightline) because in celebrations you don’t get a second take. The result is that “wild” frame where the emotion reads immediately, with nothing distracting from the power of the moment. —David Ramos

Marco Heinis, ski jumping, Team France

Photographed by Alex Pantling: Most of the ski jumping sessions had been at night, meaning that we couldn’t see the surroundings to the ski jump. Thankfully, Nordic combined was an earlier start, and we managed to take advantage of the early morning by framing the ski jumpers in-front of the local landscapes. —Alex Pantling

Diana Davis and Gleb Smolkin, ice dance, Team Georgia

Photographed by Pauline Ballet: "Infrared" is a series of pictures taken at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics with mirrorless cameras that have been modified to capture the electromagnetic spectrum beyond what's visible to the human eye. I use a full-spectrum camera, and the black-and-white rendering is quite incredible because it darkens the white of the ice and lightens colors such as red or black. The difficulty is that I lose a great deal of brightness with this system, which forces me to manual focus most of the time and raise the ISO very high. This produces a grainy, painterly look that I like very much. —Pauline Ballet

Mikael Kingsbury, freestyle skiing, Team Canada

Photographed by Michael Reaves: I was photographing the first jump with a long lens of both athletes side-by-side. In the craziness of the final and celebration, I didn't notice the jet taking off overhead. Thanks to a superb editor's attention to detail they noticed the jet in the frame and cropped the image for impact. While many times in sports photography we plan and execute an idea, sometimes there is a bit of luck and "right place, right time." —Michael Reaves

Women's Olympic curling

Photographed by Ryan Pierse: Through careful composition and timing, different elements of the game, strategy, movement and interaction are brought together within a single frame. The result reflects the thought and skill required to capture not just isolated action, but the flow of play and interactions between the athletes, perfectly illustrating the rhythm and complexity of the sport. — Ryan Pierse

Mikaela Shiffrin, alpine skiing, Team USA

Photographed by Ezra Shaw: Photographing Mikaela Shiffrin winning gold was special to me because it felt personal in a way some events just don’t. I’ve been shooting her for well over a decade now. I was in Sochi when she won her first gold medal. I was there when she won gold in Korea, and I felt horrible for her when she faltered in China four years later. When Mikaela stepped into the starting house on this day, I was just as much a fan as I was a photographer. I was really rooting for her to win. After doing this for a long time, I don’t take for granted when such a special moment in sports history happens in front of me.

Usually, I like to pick one picture that sums up my day at an event. It was hard to do that here. From the moment she crossed the finish line and knelt on her skis to take it all in, to being overcome with
emotion as she left the finish area in front of the Olympic rings, to standing on the podium holding and kissing her gold medal while celebrating with the American flag — there were just too many meaningful pictures. Of all those moments, I think my favorite was right before she stepped onto the podium to receive her gold medal. She took a deep breath, kissed her hand, and knelt to touch the snow. From my vantage point at the finish line, I was lucky enough to see her reach down and touch the snow just below the podium. —Ezra Shaw

Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, cross country skiing, Team Norway

Photographed by Maddie Meyer: [Johannes Høsflot Klæbo of Team Norway] helped lead Norway to the gold medal in this event. Klæbo is an incredible athlete, breaking the all-time Winter Olympics medal record, with 10. I wanted to illustrate his dominance above the rest of the field, so I used a panning technique to show his speed in front of the other athletes. I like the fact that you can see the intensity in his face and the bright pop of red of his kit against the white snow. — Maddie Meyer

Men’s short track speed skating

Photographed by Jamie Squire: In this image, Pietro Sighel of Team Italy narrowly avoids a collision as Furkan Akar of Team Türkiye and Reinis Bērziņšcrash during Heat 2 of the men’s 500m short track event. Ice sprays from their blades, and the intensity on their faces heightens the drama of the split-second moment as it unfolds. —Jamie Squire

Ilka Stuhec, alpine skiing, Team Slovenia

Photograph by Ezra Shaw: My main assignment at the Olympics this year is covering the women’s alpine events in Cortina. The views all around the slopes are amazing, and I knew I definitely wanted to show the mountains in my pictures from the first day of training for the women’s downhill. After skiing the course once, I decided to position myself at the top of the course for a great going away picture. Before the Olympic athletes start charging the slopes, there are usually 5-6 forerunners that test the course, which also gives photographers a great opportunity to set yourself up in a good position.

I photographed the forerunners with a few different focal lengths. Everything seemed to be lining up great. This image shows the first Olympian skiing the course, and I really liked that picture. However, things changed quickly in the mountains and by the next racer, only two minutes later, the entire view was gone as the fog rolled in. It did clear up sometimes, but the sun was unfortunately gone and never returned. —Ezra Shaw

Team Denmark hockey

Photographed by Sarah Stier: At major events like the Olympics, we leverage remote camera technology to offer multiple angles of the action, particularly in arena sports. For this photo, I was capturing the game from ice level with a handheld camera with a remote trigger mounted on top. Every time I click the shutter on my handheld, the trigger sends a signal to a camera mounted on a truss near the roof, which is angled down toward the goal. The signal will cause the remote camera to fire frames as I am firing my handheld.

I love the overhead view of this moment because it gives the viewer the opportunity to see details of the play that we wouldn't necessarily see from ice level. I like that we can see the puck about to go into the net, we can even see the Olympic rings on the puck if we zoom in, and some added details that make the frame feel dynamic — Oliver Bjorkstrand of Team Denmark raising his arms in celebration of the goal scored by his teammate Nikolaj Ehlers, his stick having been tossed behind the goal just beforehand. — Sarah Stier

Elana Meyers Taylor, bobsleigh, Team USA

Photographed by Al Bello: There were many things that came into play during this training run with Elana Meyers Taylor of Team USA. The blinds were closed, which eliminated the sun from falling upon the track. Despite this, I kept looking around and around in this turn and noticed the sun peeking through slightly. I looked at the lights in the ceiling of the turn, and also the way the turn curved and balanced the photo with the sun peeking through the blinds. Several sleds went by and some were a little low and some were a little bit off centered, but I stayed where the arc of the sled hit the top of the turn and was hoping one of the sleds came through. The USA sled came through perfectly with the sun positioned where I wanted it, and I was able to compose this photo. —Al Bello

Kateryna Kotsar, freestyle skiing, Team Ukraine

Photographed by Adam Pretty: My image of Ukraine’s Kateryna Kotsar is one of my favorites as it was just such a fleeting moment, and I think I was the only one to capture it. The light was hitting the mountains through the clouds in this particular way for only a few minutes and Kateryna made the perfect shape and hit the exact spot I had wanted. I had tried to position myself so the athletes would fly through the clean and snowy part of the mountain which would contrast really well to them being in the full shadow and give a really nice silhouette and graphic shape while showcasing the natural beauty of Livigno. —Adam Pretty

Lucas Fratzscher, biathlon, Team Germany

Photographed by Harry How: I like the blur of the Olympic rings and especially the blur of the arms and poles, which shows the strength and grace of the sport. Getting the rhythm of cross country motion is the hardest part of creating a sharp blur. —Harry How

Shun Sato, figure skating, Team Japan

Photographed by Jamie Squire: I captured this image during the figure skating team event on the opening day of the Olympics. Unlike traditional competitions that focus on individual skaters or pairs, the Olympic team event brings together athletes from the same country, with scores combined to determine the overall winner. The team with the highest total points earns gold. Here, the Japanese team cheers on Shun Sato as he completes his routine. —Jamie Squire

Philipp Raimund, ski jumping, Team Germany

Photographed by Maddie Meyer: This image was made during the ski jumping men's super team final, which was a fun event to cover. Usually from the finish line position I would use a 600mm lens, but the snow made me have to switch gears. The snowfall was so heavy that it was hard to see the athlete with the snow compressed with a telephoto lens. Instead, I used a 28-70mm lens and showcase the snow fall with a wider lens. In this image, Philipp Raimund of Team Germany celebrates after landing his run in the final round. Unfortunately, the final round was cancelled due to the weather — voiding this jump for Germany.—Maddie Meyer

Melle van 't Wout and Jens van 't Wout, speed skating, Team Netherlands

Photographed by Matthew Stockman: It was cool to be part of two brothers winning medals in the same event. It just does not happen that often. And while they took silver and bronze, you can see the joy in their faces and a memory that will last forever. —Matthew Stockman

Christoph Danksagmueller, freestyle skiing, Team Austria

Photographed by Patrick Smith: What transpires on the mountain in the first few days of the Winter Olympics always feels foreign. You're not sure where you can and cannot go and you're often breaking rules that are later put in place.

As much as you're scouting courses, you're playing with images that may never be able to be shot during competition. During the men's freestyle ski cross training, I put my camera under the fences in an awkward position to attempt to get the athletes appear that they were jumping over a mountain in the distance. To my surprise, this image of Christoph Danksagmueller of Team Austria appeared as if he was a giant skier balancing on a tiny mountain. His body language with one leg up, his tongue out, and even the camera on his helmet helped bring together a lighthearted moment before athletes tuned to competing in a serious manner. —Patrick Smith

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