Ahead of the Games, the Italian National Olympic Committee committed to paying a cash bonus to any of the country’s athletes who won a medal: roughly $213,000 for gold, $106,000 for silver and $71,000 for bronze (converted to U.S. dollars at the exchange rate at the start of the Olympics). Those rewards were generous—among the 37 delegations that confirmed to Forbes that they were offering financial incentives to Olympians who reached the podium, only Singapore, Hong Kong, Poland and Kazakhstan had plans for larger prizes. However, Singapore (offering roughly $787,000 for gold in an individual sport) and Hong Kong ($768,000) were shut out of the medal table, as they have been at every previous edition of the Winter Games, and Kazakhstan ($250,000) had a single top-three performance: Mikhail Shaidorov’s victory in men’s figure skating over the heavily favored American Ilia Malinin. Poland, pledging a combined $355,000 for individual gold from its Olympic committee and the national government, fared better, with a total of four medals in ski jumping and speedskating.

Source: Forbes February 23, 2026 13:37 UTC