2026 Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women's downhill

The women's downhill in the 2026 FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup is scheduled to consist of nine events, including the final.^[1]

The season is scheduled to begin with two downhills at St. Moritz, Switzerland on 12 and 13 December 2025 and then to remain in Europe all season, according to the initial schedule released on 12 June 2025.^[2] For the first time since 2011, the Di Prampero course in Tarvisio, Italy will host the World Cup circuit on 17 January 2026; most recently, the course hosted the 2025 FIS Junior World Championships.^[3]

The season will be interrupted for the quadrennial 2026 Winter Olympics in three regions in Italy – Milan, the Stelvio Pass, and Cortina d'Ampezzo – during 6–22 February 2026.^[4] The Alpine speed skiing events for women are scheduled to take place on the classic Olimpia delle Tofane course at Cortina d'Ampezzo.^[5] The championship in women's downhill is scheduled to be held on Sunday, 8 February.

Before the opening of the downhill season, the women's field suffered five major losses. First, defending discipline champion Federica Brignone of Italy suffered a complex injury, including a tear of her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), during the Italian championships in March 2025 that might cost her all of this season.^[6] Then, during giant slalom training at Copper Mountain (U.S.) in November, Lara Gut-Behrami of Switzerland and also tore her ACL, a season-ending knee injury.^[7] The next day, another training crash on the same slope by rising American speed star Lauren Macuga once again tore her ACL, ending her season as well.^[8][9] After returning to Europe for the official start of the speed season for women at St. Moritz, Switzerland, two more training crashes sidelined two more members of the Swiss team. First, Corinne Suter, the defending Olympic champion in this discipline, tore a muscle in her left calf, bruised her left knee, and fractured a bone in her right foot, and so was forecast to be sidelined until at least mid-January 2026.^[10] Then, during the final official pre-race training run, two-time Olympic champion Michelle Gisin crashed and was airlifted to a hospital for spinal surgery; however, this surgery was also not expected to be season-ending.^[11][12]

Finally, in the first of the two St. Moritz downhills, 41-year-old Lindsey Vonn of the United States, who was directly behind Gisin in the final training run and thus was stopped and held on the course during the airlift, won the race by almost a second for her 83rd career victory (44th in downhill) and thus became the oldest race winner, male or female, in World Cup history.^[13] The following day in the second downhill, 22-year-old all-discipline German racer Emma Aicher was able to edge Vonn to prevent back-to-back victories, although Vonn did set a new all-time women's record with her 410th World Cup race (breaking the previous record of 409 by Renate Götschl).^[14] The next weekend at Val d'Isère, France, 2024 discipline champion Cornelia Hütter of Austria was the best in flat light conditions, edging past Germany's Kira Weidle-Winkelmann, the race's initial starter, and benefitting from mid-race errors by Vonn (who finished third) and Italy's Sofia Goggia, who dropped all the way back to eighth after being forced off the main track, leaving Vonn still in first by 69 points over Aicher.^[15]

The downhill season resumed in January 2026 with a shortened course due to heavy snow in Zauchensee, Austria, and Vonn remained on top of the podium by a little over 1/3 of a second over Norway's Kajsa Vickhoff Lie, allowing her to open up a 129-point lead over Aicher in the discipline.^[16] The next week, on the long downhill course at Tarvisio, Italy, which was a strong course for downhillers good at gliding, Nicol Delago posted a home-team victory for her first World Cup win, edging out both Weidle-Winkelmann and Vonn, who posted her fifth-straight podium for the season and opened up a 144-point lead over Aicher in the discipline.^[17] The season resumed two weeks later at Crans Montana, Switzerland, just nine days before the Olympic downhill, on a day with snowfall and poor visibility, which led to three of the first six racers crashing out, including two – Marte Monsen of Norway and Vonn – who ended up in the netting surrounding the course and needed significant assistance, before the race was canceled.^[18] Vonn was airlifted off the course^[19] and found to have completely torn her ACL, an injury requiring surgery that would normally be season-ending – but Vonn decided to compete in the Olympics anyway by wearing a knee brace on her non-titanium left knee;^[20] meanwhile, the canceled downhill from Crans Montana was rescheduled for Val di Fassa, Italy, on 6 March 2026, the day before an already-scheduled World Cup downhill.^[21]

At the Olympic downhill, Vonn's gamble looked sound when she finished third in the final training run, but it quickly backfired the next day when her right shoulder and arm hit a gate while airborne during the race, resulting in a horrendous crash that broke her left leg and required her to be airlifted to a hospital for immediate surgery, thus ending her season.^[22] However, her teammate Breezy Johnson, who won the world championship in downhill last year but had missed the 2022 Winter Olympics due to her own crash at Cortina d'Ampezzo during training there,^[23] became the second American woman (after Vonn in 2010) to win the Olympic gold in this event, edging Aicher by just 0.04 seconds, with the home country's Goggia completing her complete set of Olympic medals with the bronze (joining her gold from 2018 and her silver from 2022).^[24]

The World Cup finals in the discipline are scheduled to take place on Saturday, 21 March 2026 on the Olympiabakken course at Kvitfjell, near Lillehammer, Norway.^[25] Only the top 25 skiers in the World Cup downhill discipline and the winner of the 2026 FIS Junior World Championships in the discipline, plus any skiers who have scored at least 500 points in the World Cup overall classification for the season, will be eligible to compete in the final, and only the top 15 will earn World Cup points.

	Venue	12 Dec 2025 St. Moritz	13 Dec 2025 St. Moritz	20 Dec 2025 Val d'Isère	10 Jan 2026 Zauchensee	17 Jan 2026 Tarvisio	30 Jan 2026 Crans Montana	8 Feb 2026 Cortina d'Ampezzo	27 Feb 2026 Soldeu	6 Mar 2026 Val di Fassa R#	7 Mar 2026 Val di Fassa	21 Mar 2026 Kvitfjell
#	Skier												Total
1	Lindsey Vonn	100	80	60	100	60	x	DNF	DNS				400
2	Emma Aicher	45	100	26	40	45	x	②					256
3	Kira Weidle-Winkelmann	32	18	80	22	80	x	⑨					232
4	Laura Pirovano	32	40	45	50	40	x	⑥					207
5	Nicol Delago	22	0	29	29	100	x	⑪					180
	Sofia Goggia	50	60	32	14	24	x	③					180
7	Cornelia Hütter	40	15	100	11	13	x	④					179
8	Breezy Johnson	16	50	36	36	40	x	①					178
9	Mirjam Puchner	60	45	11	2	24	x	⑪					142
10	Kajsa Vickhoff Lie	12	13	18	80	18	x	⑦					141
11	Ilka Štuhec	18	22	50	15	32	x	⑮					137
12	Nina Ortlieb	26	32	24	0	50	x	DNF					132
13	Romane Miradoli	40	16	22	32	14	x	⑯					124
14	Magdalena Egger	80	36	7	DNF	DNS							123
15	Jacqueline Wiles	13	11	16	60	20	x	④					120
16	Ester Ledecká	9	14	40	26	15	x	DNS					104
17	Ariane Rädler	24	26	15	7	11	x	⑧					83
18	Marte Monsen	0	29	20	DNF	29	x	DNS					78
19	Janine Schmitt	8	0	0	45	10	x	⑰					63
20	Malorie Blanc	20	12	5	20	1	x	⑲					58
21	Allison Mollin	4	9	9	18	12	x	DNS					52
22	Elena Curtoni	0	3	14	26	7	x	DNS					50
23	Nadia Delago	0	0	6	13	26	x	DNS					45
24	Jasmine Flury	1	24	13	0	1	x	⑱					39
25	Isabella Wright	15	20	0	DNS	2	x	㉑					37
26	Keely Cashman	7	10	3	13	0	x	DNS					33
27	Corinne Suter	DNS			9	16	x	⑭					25
28	Haley Cutler	11	0	4	0	8	x	DNS					23
29	Delia Durrer	0	6	13	0	3	x	DNS					21
30	Laura Gauché	0	5	0	16	0	x	⑬					21
31	Alice Robinson	2	DNS	10	5	DNS	x	DNS					17
32	Jasmina Suter	15	0	0	0	0	x	DNS					15
33	Roberta Melesi	6	7	0	0	0	x	DNS					13
	Priska Ming-Nufer	0	8	0	0	5	x	DNS					13
35	Camille Cerutti	0	2	0	10	0	x	㉓					12
36	Lena Wechner	11	0	0	0	0	x	DNS					11
37	Christina Ager	4	0	2	0	4	x	DNS					10
38	Ricarda Haaser	DNS				9	x	DNS					9
39	Nadine Fest	0	1	0	7	0	x	DNS					8
	Valérie Grenier	0	0	8	DNS	0	DNS	DSQ					8
	Sara Thaler	DSQ	0	0	8	0	DNS	DNS					8
42	Joana Hählen	0	5	1	0	0	x	DNS					6
	Emily Schöpf	0	0	0	0	6	x	DNS					6
44	Cande Moreno	5	0	0	0	0	x	DNF					5
45	Inni Holm Wembstad	0	DNS		4	DNS							4
46	Carmen Spielberger	DNF	DNF	DNS	3	DNS							3
47	Leonie Zegg	DNS			1	DNS							1
48	Elvedina Muzaferija	0	0	0	0	0	x	⑳					0
	Karen Clément	0	0	DNS									0
	Vicky Bernardi	0	0	DNS	0	DNS							0
	Federica Brignone	DNS					x	⑩					0
	Marta Bassino	DNS											0
	Michelle Gisin	DNS											0
	References	[26]	[27]	[28]	[29]	[30]	[31][32]	[33]

•   Winner (100 points)
•   2nd place (80 points)
•   3rd place (60 points)
• DNF = Did not finish
• DSQ = Disqualified
•   Did not start (DNS)
•   Not eligible for finals (NE)
•   Race canceled (x)
•   FIS non-World Cup race (Olympics)
• R# = Rescheduled (make-up) race
• Updated on 17 January 2026, after 5 races.^[34]

• 2026 Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women's summary rankings
• 2026 Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women's overall
• 2026 Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women's super-G
• 2026 Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women's giant slalom
• 2026 Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women's slalom
• World Cup scoring system

• Alpine Skiing at FIS website