Figure skating at the 2026 Winter Olympics – Pair skating

Figure skating at the 2026 Winter Olympics
Qualification
Singles	men	women
Pairs	mixed
Ice dance	mixed
Team event	mixed

The pairs figure skating competition at the 2026 Winter Olympics will be held on 15 and 16 February at the Forum di Milano in Milan, Italy.

Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the International Olympic Committee suspended the Olympic Committees of Russia and Belarus. The skating federations of Russia and Belarus were each permitted to nominate one skater or team from each discipline to participate at the Skate to Milano as a means to qualify for the 2026 Winter Olympics as Individual Neutral Athletes (AINs). Each nominee was required to pass a special screening process to assess whether they had displayed support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine or had any contractual links to the Russian or Belarusian military.^[1][2] No pairs teams from either Russia or Belarus are competing in the 2026 Winter Olympics.

The pair skating competition at the 2026 Winter Olympics will be held on 15 and 16 February at the Forum di Milano in Milan, Italy.^[3] Having won both segments of the team event, Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara of Japan are seen as the most likely candidates to win the gold.^[4] Miura and Kihara are two-time World champions and also competed at the 2022 Winter Olympics, where they won silver medals in the team event.^[5]

At age 42, Deanna Stellato-Dudek of Canada is the oldest woman to compete in figure skating at the Olympics.^[6] She had competed in single skating as a teenager, winning a gold medal at the 1999 Junior Grand Prix Final and a silver medal at the 2000 World Junior Championships, before retiring in 2001 due to injury.^[7] She returned to skating as a pair skater in 2016, first with Nathan Bartholomay and competing for the United States, and then with Maxime Deschamps and competing for Canada. In 2024, she became the oldest woman to win a gold medal at the World Figure Skating Championships. Speaking about her record-setting accomplishment, Stellato-Dudek stated that "it is something I take with huge pride. I hope others can be inspired to stay around a lot longer, not only in sport, but also in other aspects of life.”^[8] At the 2025 John Nicks Pairs Competition, Stellato-Dudek performed a backflip with an assist from Deschamps. Stellato-Dudek, who cited Surya Bonaly of France as an inspiration, became the first woman to perform the backflip since it became a legal element in figure skating in 2024.^[9] On 2 February, Skate Canada announced that Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps would not compete in the team event after Stellato-Dudek suffered an injury during practice, but that no decision had been made with regards to the pairs event.^[10] She was later medically cleared to compete. After their arrival in Milan, it was later confirmed that she and Deschamps would not perform the backflip as part of their short program.^[6]

Fifteen quota spots in the pairs event were awarded based on results at the 2025 World Figure Skating Championships.^[11] An additional three spots were awarded at the Skate to Milano.^[12] Uzbekistan originally qualified one quota spot in the pairs event after Ekaterina Geynish and Dmitrii Chigirev finished in tenth place at the 2025 World Championships.^[13] However, after Geynish and Chigirev ended their partnership,^[14] the spot was re-allocated to France, who chose to send Camille Kovalev and Pavel Kovalev.^[15]

Quota spots in pair skating^[11][12]

Event	Teams per NOC	Qualifying NOCs	Total teams
2025 World Championships	2	Canada  Italy  Germany  United States	15
	1	Japan  Georgia  Australia  Hungary  Uzbekistan  Great Britain  Poland  Netherlands
Skate to Milano	1	China  Armenia  Japan	4
Skate to Milano – Reallocation		France
Total			19

Pairs performed their short programs on 15 February.^[3] Lasting no more than 2 minutes 40 seconds,^[16] the short program had to include the following elements: one pair lift, one double or triple twist lift, one double or triple throw jump, one double or triple solo jump, one solo spin combination with a change of foot, one death spiral, and a step sequence using the full ice surface.^[17]

The top sixteen highest scoring teams will perform their free skates on 16 February.^[3] The free skate can last no more than 4 minutes,^[16] and has to include the following: three pair lifts, of which one has to be a twist lift; two different throw jumps; one solo jump; one jump combination or sequence; one pair spin combination; one death spiral; and a choreographic sequence.^[18]

All of the technical elements in any figure skating performance – such as jumps and spins – are assigned a predetermined base point value and are then scored by a panel of nine judges on a scale from -5 to 5 based on their quality of execution.^[19] The judging panel's Grade of Execution (GOE) is determined by calculating the trimmed mean (that is, the average after deleting the highest and lowest scores), and this GOE is added to the base value to come up with the final score for each element. The panel's scores for all elements are added together to generate a total elements score.^[20] At the same time, judges evaluate each performance based on three program components – skating skills, presentation, and composition – and assign a score from .25 to 10 in .25 point increments.^[21] The judging panel's final score for each program component is also determined by calculating the trimmed mean. Those scores are then multiplied by the factor shown on the following chart; the results are added together to generate a total program component score.^[22]

Deductions are applied for certain violations like time infractions, stops and restarts, or falls.^[24] The total elements score and total program component score are added together, minus any deductions, to generate a final performance score for each skater.^[25]

Pairs' short program results^[26]

Pl.	Team	Nation	TSS	TES	PCS	CO	PR	SS
1	Minerva Fabienne Hase Nikita Volodin	Germany	80.01	43.91	36.10	9.07	9.14	8.93
2	Anastasiia Metelkina Luka Berulava	Georgia	75.46	41.45	34.01	8.50	8.46	8.61
3	Lia Pereira Trennt Michaud	Canada	74.60	42.20	32.40	8.04	8.32	8.00
4	Maria Pavlova Alexei Sviatchenko	Hungary	73.87	41.34	32.53	8.18	8.07	8.21
5	Riku Miura Ryuichi Kihara	Japan	73.11	38.14	34.97	8.93	8.57	8.79
6	Sui Wenjing Han Cong	China	72.66	39.28	33.38	8.43	8.46	8.21
7	Ellie Kam Daniel O'Shea	United States	71.87	38.81	33.06	8.32	8.39	8.14
8	Sara Conti Niccolò Macii	Italy	71.70	37.22	34.48	8.68	8.71	8.54
9	Emily Chan Spencer Akira Howe	United States	70.06	39.00	31.06	7.89	7.86	7.61
10	Rebecca Ghilardi Filippo Ambrosini	Italy	69.08	38.29	30.79	7.79	7.86	7.50
11	Annika Hocke Robert Kunkel	Germany	67.52	37.72	29.80	7.36	7.54	7.50
12	Karina Akopova Nikita Rakhmanin	Armenia	66.27	38.16	28.11	6.89	7.00	7.25
13	Anastasia Vaipan-Law Luke Digby	Great Britain	66.07	36.99	29.08	7.36	7.32	7.18
14	Deanna Stellato-Dudek Maxime Deschamps	Canada	66.04	34.97	32.07	8.18	7.93	8.00
15	Ioulia Chtchetinina Michał Woźniak	Poland	65.23	36.58	28.65	7.11	7.39	7.04
16	Camille Kovalev Pavel Kovalev	France	64.65	35.99	28.66	7.32	7.11	7.11
17	Daria Danilova Michel Tsiba	Netherlands	64.07	36.87	27.20	6.71	6.86	6.89
18	Anastasiia Golubeva Hektor Giotopoulos Moore	Australia	60.69	32.85	27.84	7.04	6.93	6.96
19	Yuna Nagaoka Sumitada Moriguchi	Japan	59.62	31.46	30.16	7.68	7.25	7.75

Pairs' results

Rank	Skater	Nation	Total	SP		FS
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17	Daria Danilova Michel Tsiba	Netherlands	64.07	17	64.07	Did not advance to free skate
18	Anastasiia Golubeva Hektor Giotopoulos Moore	Australia	60.69	18	60.69
19	Yuna Nagaoka Sumitada Moriguchi	Japan	59.62	19	59.62

• "Special Regulations & Technical Rules – Single & Pair Skating and Ice Dance 2024" (PDF). International Skating Union. Archived (PDF) from the original on 3 June 2025. Retrieved 15 August 2025.