According to Forbes, several nations have announced cash bonuses for athletes who win medals at the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. Singapore tops the list — offering one of the world’s largest payouts for a gold medal at about $788,000 USD for an individual sport gold medalist.
Other high-paying places include Hong Kong, which also offers a large bonus (several hundred thousand USD), as well as countries like Italy, Poland, and Slovenia with significant but smaller rewards compared with Singapore and Hong Kong, News.Az reports.
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By contrast, nations with lower medal payout levels include New Zealand, Australia, Denmark, Canada, Austria, the Netherlands, Germany, and the United States, where bonus amounts are much smaller or minimal.
In Singapore’s case, the very high reward stems from its Major Games Award Programme, which has historically provided large bonuses to Olympic medalists — for example, gold medalists at previous Games received S$1 million (about $740,000 USD) under that programme.
