This new year will be full of important events, including America's 250th birthday, the world's greatest sporting event, and a mission to the moon.
Here are some of the significant events that will happen this year.
Milan Cortina Games
Grab your skis, snowboard and skates – it's almost time Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.
The Games will take place in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo (Italy) from February 6 to 22, when international winter sports stars will compete for Olympic gold and glory.
Opening ceremony to take place “TODAY” show host Savannah Guthrie and NBC Sports' Terry Gannon will host.will take place at the San Siro football stadium in Milan. The festival will include a parade of delegations, the lighting of the Olympic cauldron, Mariah Carey performance and action Italian actor Pierfrancesco Favino.
Some of Team USA's returning favorites this year are skiers. Jesse Digginscouple-snowboarder Noah Elliotfreestyle skier Alex Hall and snowboarder Chloe Kim — all gold medalists.
The closing ceremony is scheduled for February 22. Both ceremonies will air on NBC and are available to stream on Peacock.
The Paralympic Games will take place from 6 to 14 March, also in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, and will feature six sports: Para skiing, parabiathlon, Para cross-country skiing, Para hockey, Para snowboarding and wheelchair curling.
Launch of Artemis II
2026 NASA is finally returning to the moon – something like that.
The Artemis II mission is the next step in NASA's program to return to the Moon. launch expected somewhere from February to April. The flight will be a key test of NASA's Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. The mission will send four astronauts on a roughly 10-day trip around the Moon to evaluate how various systems and equipment on the Orion spacecraft function in deep space environments.
The mission will be the first crewed flight of the Artemis program and will take astronauts to the closest point humans have been to the Moon in more than 50 years since the end of the Apollo program.
This will be watched closely, especially since the Trump administration has repeatedly talked about the need to return to the Moon. before China lands its astronauts on the lunar surface. Much of this vision depends on the results of the Artemis II mission.
If successful, the flight would pave the way for the Artemis III mission, which is expected to take astronauts near the moon's south pole. In his recent decree, the President Donald Trump directed NASA to return astronauts to the Moon by 2028 “to establish American leadership in space, lay the foundations for lunar economic development, prepare for a journey to Mars, and inspire the next generation of American explorers.”
2026 FIFA World Cup
Long live football!
The FIFA World Cup, the world's premier international football competition, returns for its 23rd edition this summer. This year, a record 48 teams will compete for glory across three host countries—for the first time, the United States, Canada and Mexico.
The spectacle will begin with the opening match on June 11 at Aztec Stadium in Mexico City. The final is set for July 19 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
Over the course of a month, 104 matches will take place, in which the best representatives of each country will compete.
16 host cities – Toronto and Vancouver in Canada; Guadalajara, Mexico City and Monterrey in Mexico; and Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York-New Jersey, Philadelphia, San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle in the United States.
There will be 16 more teams participating this year than at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Returning this year are reigning champions Argentina (three-time World Cup winner), soccer legends Brazil (five-time record holder), England (which won when they hosted the cup in 1966), Germany (four-time winner), France (two-time winner, including most recently in 2018), Spain (2010 champions), Uruguay (two-time winner) and the United States, who have yet to claim the coveted title.
nations making their own World Championship debut Cape Verde, CuracaoJordan and Uzbekistan.
As of December, 42 teams had qualified, including Mexico, Canada, Australia, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, Ghana, Iran, Japan, South Korea, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.
The remaining six will be determined by March, with four teams qualifying from the European knockout stages and the other two from the World Cup knockout tournament. according to FIFA.
America 250
This year the US will celebrate its 250th birthdayin memory of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
The day marked the founding of the United States as a sovereign nation, emerging from British colonial rule and enshrining America's enduring creeds of equality and “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Events and initiatives to mark the anniversary are already underway, with many planned throughout the year.
On New Year's Day, America250The nonpartisan initiative, which Congress established in 2016 to plan the anniversary, will be held at the Rose Parade in Pasadena, California. Its theme is “Soaring forward together for 250 years.”
In January 2025, Trump released executive order plan events to mark the anniversary. He later announced Freedom 250, a nonpartisan initiative launched at his direction to plan additional holiday events. These events began on New Year's Eve, when the Washington Monument was transformed into the “world's tallest holiday candle” with projections that aired every night until January 5th.
According to Freedom 250, the Great American State Fair will take place on the National Mall from June 25 to July 10, featuring pavilions from all 50 states.
“Quite frankly, you will never see anything like this and you will never see anything like this again,” Trump said in a statement. video address December 18.
The celebrations will culminate with a “unifying national celebration on the National Mall” on Independence Day, including a military flyover, a speech by Trump and fireworks.
The group also announced the first Patriot Games, a four-day sporting competition featuring the top high school athletes, one young man and one young woman, from each state and territory.
There will also be a Memorial Day parade. UFC event at the White House on Flag Day, June 14, which is also Trump's birthday.
Trump also said he plans to build an “Arc de Triomphe” in the nation's capital, similar to Paris' Arc de Triomphe.
Midterm elections
battle for control of Congressas well as key gubernatorial and nationwide elections, will dominate Political calendar 2026.
Republicans are defending a narrow majority in the House of Representatives—Democrats need to win just three seats to regain control (a task that could be complicated by the ongoing redistricting wildfire engulfing state legislatures across the country). The GOP will likely have an easier time defending its Senate majority because Democrats need to pick up four more seats there, and much of that battleground lies in states Trump won in 2024.
There will also be major gubernatorial elections in key swing states such as Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin; a legislative race that could determine control of legislatures across the country; and mayoral elections in cities such as Los Angeles and Washington, DC.
