Winter Olympics 2026: What to know about women's individual figure skating

The Winter Olympics figure skating events will wrap up this week with a true headliner: the women’s individual competition.

The women take the ice Tuesday for the short program and return Thursday for the free skate.

New to figure skating? Been away since the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics? Here’s a quick rundown of what’s happened since then — and what to expect at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics.

Where did we leave things off at the last Olympics?

Nowhere good, unfortunately. The women's figure skating competition at the 2022 Olympic Games was a generational disgrace.

Russians Kamila Valieva, Alexandra Trusova and Anna Shcherbakova entered the competition expecting to sweep the podium. Their coach, Eteri Tutberidze, had raised eyebrows for her singularly harsh training methods, but those methods were working. Her athletes kicked off their Olympics by storming to a gold medal in the team event.

From there, everything fell apart. Reports emerged accusing the 15-year-old presumed gold-medalist Valieva of doping; those accusations were later found to be correct. Her scores were stripped from Russia's team event scores, which dropped it from first to a distant third.

Valieva was allowed to compete in the individual event anyway, but it didn't go as planned. She fell multiple times in her long program and wound up missing the podium. Shcherbakova won gold with a beautiful, emotive free skate, while Trusova — pressured to load her program with quads at the expense of artistry — wound up furious with silver. 

Coach Tutberidze ended the Olympics with a raging Trusova on her left and a heartbroken Valieva on her right, while Shcherbakova, the rightful Olympic champion, sat all alone in the winner's chair on the other side of the arena.

That's the enduring image of the women's skating event in 2022: Shcherbakova, in the biggest moment of her life, staring into middle distance in horror while her teammates fell apart.

Have things improved since then?

Yes, thankfully. That 2022 Olympic final wound up being a reckoning for women's figure skating and the whole program is much healthier these days. Russia doesn't even factor into the picture. It has been banned from international competition for years because of its invasion of Ukraine.

In Russia's absence, Japan and the United States have dominated the sport. Japan's Kaori Sakamoto won world titles in 2022, 2023 and 2024, while Team USA's Alysa Liu took top honors in 2025. 

Who's likely to medal in 2026?

Any gold-medal conversation must start with the beloved veteran Sakamoto. These are her third, and final, Olympics, and she's playing into the moment by skating to some real tearjerkers. She'll do Andrea Bocelli's "Time to Say Goodbye" for her short program and Edith Piaf's "Je Ne Regrette Rien" for her long program. There won't be a dry eye in the rink by the time she's finished.