With the 2026 Winter Olympic Games taking place in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy has tapped one of the country’s biggest pop stars to perform at the Opening Ceremony. Known for Italian hits like “La Solitudine” and more, Laura Pausini is set to take the stage at San Siro Stadium on February 6.
Always a highlight, the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics is a chance for the host city to show off its local culture, often enhanced by a pyrotechnic extravaganza that befits the grandeur of the Games. For the 2024 Summer Games in Paris, performers sang and danced along the Seine River, while torchbearers zip-lined and parkour’d their way to the cauldron. Italy — which last hosted the Games in 2006, in the city of Turin — will no doubt want to put on an equally impressive display. The theme this year is “Armonia,” or “Harmony,” and the Olympics said Pausini “authentically embodies the concept.”
“Her music, capable of spanning generations, cultures and languages, represents a meeting point between tradition and contemporaneity, between Italian roots and an international outlook,” the statement continued. “Her involvement in the Opening Ceremony will be an authentic expression of Italian identity and tradition.”
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Read on to learn more about Pausini and get all the details on how to watch her performance at the 2026 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony.
Laura Pausini is an award-winning Italian singer and songwriter
Pausini shot to fame in 1993 as an 18-year-old after winning a song contest at the popular Sanremo Music Festival, according to Billboard, with her first album taking off in Italy, Belgium, Holland, and elsewhere in Europe. Pausini also sings in Spanish, and her second album became a sensation in Spain before spreading to Latin America. Pausini told Billboard she was “happy to have been adopted by Latin audiences,” and she’s remained a mainstay of the Latin Grammys ever since.
Pausini has also recorded in French, English, and Portuguese. And you may have heard her voice already, as she contributed to the soundtracks for hit movies like “One More Time” for Message In A Bottle and “The Extra Mile” for Pokémon The Movie.
The Latin Times recently described her as “one of Italy’s most internationally recognized voices with more than 70 million albums sold.” She is married and has one child.
Laura Pausini’s biggest songs
Pausini won a Grammy Award in 2006 in the Best Latin Pop Album category and also has four Latin Grammys to her name. In 2023, she was named the Latin Recording Academy Person of the Year, a testament to her 30-year career and, per Rolling Stone, her commitment to social justice.
Some of her best-loved songs include “Lado Derecho Del Corazón,” “En Cambio No,” “Vive Ya! (Vivere),” “Vivimi,” and her breakout hit “La Solitudine.” In 2024, she released a new version of her 1990s song “Se Fue” featuring Rauw Alejandro, which marked her first appearance on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart.
In 2025, Pausini and English singer Robbie Williams recorded “Desire,” the first official anthem for soccer’s governing body, FIFA. The same year, she was honored with the Billboard Icon Award at the Billboard Latin Music Awards. “I’ve always said it: being from Italy and at the same time feeling so Latina is an enormous privilege that you have allowed. You have adopted me since I was a teenager,” she told the audience.
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Laura Pausini’s song “lo si” earned an Oscar nomination and won a Golden Globe
Written by Diane Warren, Laura Pausini, and Niccolò Agliardi for the 2020 film The Life Ahead, “Io Si/ Seen” was also released in English (“Seen”), Spanish (“Yo Si”), Portuguese (“Eu Sim”), and French (“Moi Si”), and was honored with an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song in 2021.
“I never dreamed of fame,” she told the Miami New Times. “To be nominated for an Oscar, for a song in Italian, was unthinkable. But Sophia Loren herself called me. That was surreal.”
The tune did not take home the Academy Award, but it did win its category at the 2021 Golden Globes. “When I won the Golden Globe, I questioned how I could deserve this new award and what new responsibility I had. In these 30 years, I have luckily won many awards, and with each one, I have said to myself: ‘Okay, now I have won, so I must do better the next one because if I have an award, the responsibility is to improve myself,'” Pausini told Grammy.com.
Watch Laura Pausini perform in the Olympic Games opening ceremony
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Along with Mariah Carey, Andrea Bocelli, Pierfrancesco Favino, and Sabrina Impacciatore, Pausini will perform at the Opening Ceremony of the XXV Olympic Winter Games on Friday, February 6. You can watch all of the action live on NBC or Peacock, starting at 2 p.m. ET, with primetime coverage of the event airing at 8 p.m. ET.