Italy has proposed to spread the 2026 Games among several cities between Milan and Cortina, which are about 250 miles apart. The opening ceremony will be held at Milan’s San Siro soccer stadium, which hosted the 1990 soccer World Cup, and the closing ceremony is scheduled to take place in an amphitheater in Verona.

The costs of hosting the Winter Games drew a jaw-dropping reaction when Russia spent $51 billion to construct and operate the 2014 Olympics in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

The 2022 Games were awarded to Beijing almost by default as a number of potential host cities withdrew. The only other remaining bidder was Almaty, Kazakhstan, located in a former Soviet republic that gained its independence in 1991, built only mixed public support for the Games, lacked name recognition and had no real experience hosting major international sporting events.

Still, Almaty narrowly lost by a vote of 44-40. That left Beijing, which hosted the 2008 Summer Games but which does not have much of a winter sports history. It will use some existing arenas from 2008, including the Bird’s Nest stadium. But upon winning the 2022 bid, Beijing officials said they would also rely on an extensive artificial snow-making operation and a high-speed train project that would link Beijing with clusters of venues in the mountains as far as 100 miles away.

Bidding for the 2026 Games experienced a similarly withered field of candidates as public interest flagged or rose in opposition in Calgary, Alberta; Sion, Switzerland; Graz, Austria; and Sapporo, Japan. The I.O.C. did not consider a bid by Erzurum, Turkey, to be sustainable.

The I.O.C. separated the Winter Games from the Summer Games, beginning in 1994, in order to give the Winter Olympics more prominence. They have moved from historical settings in ski resorts to larger cities like Turin, Vancouver and Salt Lake City (which could be a favorite to host the 2030 Games).

Inevitably, costs rose, and on some occasions there has been little hint of winter. In Sochi, the climate is so temperate that palm trees flourish there; at times, it got so warm during the 2014 Winter Games that some sun bathers jumped into the Black Sea in their Speedos.