The women's overall competition in the 2026 FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup consisted of 37 events in four disciplines: downhill (DH) (9 races), super-G (SG) (8 races), giant slalom (GS) (10 races), and slalom (SL) (10 races). A tentative schedule was circulated on 12 May 2025 following the FIS Alpine Spring Meeting in Vilamoura, Portugal. The initial schedule was released on 12 June 2025 and features events at 20 different resorts, beginning with the traditional opener: a giant slalom on the Rettenbach ski course, located on the Rettenbach glacier in Sölden, Austria, on 25 October 2025. The initial schedule was subject to amendment or revision until the actual start of the season, although the only amendments made to it were caused by adverse weather. Also, for the fourth straight season, neither the combined discipline nor the parallel discipline was contested on the Alpine skiing World Cup circuit, and neither is expected to be contested in the near future, so both may be considered as inactive from now on; in fact, the individual combined was replaced at the 2026 Winter Olympics by the debut of the "team combined", in which two different racers competed for their national team in the speed (downhill/super G) and technical (slalom) portions of the competition.
During the season, Mikaela Shiffrin of the U.S. built up a huge lead for the overall championship, only to have to withstand a late charge from Emma Aicher of Germany, the only competitor to compete in every discipline during the 2026 season (placing in the top 20 in each of them). The battle continued until the second run of the last race of the season at finals, before Shiffrin finally secured her women's-record-tying sixth overall victory.
In 2025, Italian three-event star Federica Brignone won her second overall World Cup title, along with the downhill and giant slalom disciplines. Brignone thus became the oldest overall winner among women at age 34. However, after the end of the World Cup season, Brignone suffered a serious crash during the Italian national championships, fracturing her left leg tibia in multiple places, also breaking the fibular head, and rupturing the ACL. As a result, she was expected to miss most, if not all, of the 2026 season, although she did not need additional surgery to repair her ACL tear.
As is the case every fourth year, the 2026 Winter Olympics (referred to as "Milan Cortina 2026") took place during the season, this time in three regions in ItalyMilan, the Stelvio Pass, and Cortina d'Ampezzoduring 6–22 February 2026. All of the Alpine skiing events for women were held on the classic Olimpia delle Tofane course at Cortina d'Ampezzo. Brignone ended up returning and winning the gold medal in both super-G and giant slalom; Shiffrin won in slalom; Shiffrin's teammate and lifelong friend Breezy Johnson won downhill; and the Austrian team of Ariane Rädler (downhill) and Katharina Huber (slalom) won the team combined.
Season summary The opening months (Oct. 2025 to Christmas) With Brignone on hand for the traditional season-opening race in Sölden, Austria, 27-year-old Austrian skier Julia Scheib, who had finished third in the race last year for her first-ever World Cup individual podium, grabbed her first-ever World Cup victory, which also represented the first victory by an Austrian woman in a World Cup giant slalom race since March 2016. But five-time overall champion Mikaela Shiffrin of the United States (who missed most of last season with a serious puncture wound — but still won four races in her limited appearances, giving her an all-time record of 101 World Cup wins) showed that she was back at full strength in the season opening slalom at Levi, Finland, posting the fastest time in both runs, blowing out the field (with Lara Colturi of Albania second by over a second and a half, and the rest of the field over another second behind), and winning her ninth reindeer for her victory at Levi. Shiffrin's win, coupled with a fourth by Paula Moltzan (who finished second at Sölden), gave the United States the top two places in the overall season standings, with Colturi, a native Italian but naturalized Albanian, moving into third overall on her 19th birthday. The next weekend in Gurgl, Austria for another slalom, Shiffrin again dominated, defeating second-place Colturi by 1.23 seconds.
The World Cup races for both men and women then moved to the Western Hemisphere for the next two weeks, with the first two races, a giant slalom and a slalom, taking place at Copper Mountain (U.S.), which hadn't hosted the World Cup since 2001. Before the first race there, two-time overall champion (and defending super-G champion) Lara Gut-Behrami of Switzerland crashed during giant slalom training and tore her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), a season-ending knee injury; prior to the injury, Gut-Behrami had planned to retire at the end of the season, but after the injury, she took more of a wait-and-see attitude about retirement. The next day, another training crash on the same slope by rising American speed star Lauren Macuga also tore her ACL, ending her season as well. Finally, in the giant slalom, Scheib almost pulled off a second straight victory, but instead New Zealand's Alice Robinson, the first run leader, held form and became the first woman not from Europe or North America to record five World Cup race victories. Remaining in North America for two giant slalom races at Tremblant (Canada), the first race saw Robinson pulling off a back-to-back victory by almost a second over Zrinka Ljutić of Croatia and becoming the discipline leader. The next day, Scheib bounced back (after crashing the first day) to claim her second giant slalom victory of the season by about half a second, although Shiffrin (who finished fourth) retained the overall lead and Robinson (who finished third) narrowly retained the discipline lead.
After returning to Europe for the official start of the speed season for women, with two downhills and a super-G at St. Moritz, Switzerland, two more training crashes sidelined more members of the Swiss team. First, Corinne Suter, the defending Olympic champion in downhill (and 2020 World Cup discipline champion in both downhill and super-G), tore a muscle in her left calf, bruised her left knee, and fractured a bone in her right foot, and so was forecast to be sidelined until at least mid-January 2026. Then, during the final official pre-race training run, two-time Olympic champion Michelle Gisin crashed and was airlifted to a hospital for spinal surgery; however, this surgery was also not expected to be season-ending. Finally, in the first of the two downhills, 41-year-old Lindsey Vonn of the United States, who was directly behind Gisin in the final training run and thus was stopped and held on the course during the airlift, and who in March had become the oldest female ever to podium in a World Cup race (after a five-year retirement, but with new titanium implants in her right knee), won the race by almost a second for her 83rd career victory (44th in downhill) and thus became the oldest race winner, male or female, in World Cup history (breaking the record previously held by 37-year-old Didier Cuche on 24 February 2012 at a super-G in Crans-Montana). The following day in the second downhill, 22-year-old all-discipline German racer Emma Aicher was able to edge Vonn to prevent back-to-back victories, although Vonn did set a new all-time women's record with her 410th World Cup race (breaking the previous record of 409 by Renate Götschl). Finally, in the super-G, Robinson, the giant slalom discipline leader, edged France's Romane Miradoli, Italy's Sofia Goggia, and Vonn for her first-ever super-G victory, moving her up to just 64 points behind Shiffrin (who competed in her first super-G in almost exactly two years but missed the last gate, costing her a top-10 finish).
Despite the glitch in her super-G restart, Shiffrin's slalom domination remained unchanged, as she won the next race, a night slalom in Courcheval, France, by over 1.5 seconds once more, boosting her lead in the slalom standings to 180 points after just four races in the discipline and her lead in the overall standings back to 164 points. Later that week in a downhill at Val d'Isère, France, 2024 downhill champion Cornelia Hütter of Austria was the best in flat light conditions, edging past Germany's Kira Weidle-Winkelmann, the race's initial starter, and benefitting from mid-race errors by Vonn (who finished third) and Italy's Sofia Goggia, who dropped all the way back to eighth after being forced off the main track. In the next day's super-G, Goggia avoided a similar error and picked up her first victory of the season, with Robinson close behind in second (and closing to just 74 points behind Shiffrin, who skipped the race) and Vonn in third.
Midseason (Christmas to Winter Olympics)
Two days after Christmas, the women held two technical events in Semmering, Austria. In the giant slalom, Scheib won for the second time this season in front of a home crowd (and third time overall in the discipline), which enabled her to regain the discipline lead over Robinson, who failed to complete her first run; Shiffrin finished sixth and increased her overall lead to 114 points. In the second race, another night slalom, the first run took place on a mild afternoon that destroyed the course, with only 40 of the 77 starters even being able to finish due to all the damage . . . and times almost six seconds behind first-run leader Camille Rast of Switzerland, who had finished second to Scheib in the previous day's giant slalom by .14 seconds (and today held over a half-second lead on Shiffrin in fourth), still qualified for the second run. Although conditions for the second run (three and a half hours later) were better, 6 of the 30 racers nevertheless failed to finish, and 2 others were so far behind (over 8.5 seconds) that they did not earn any points; Rast, however, posted the second-best time for the second run but failed to win, by .09 seconds this time, because Shiffrin closed with a great finishing run that beat Rast by .63 seconds, thus keeping Shiffrin undefeated in slalom for the season and giving her the sixth straight win in slalom (going back to last season), 69th win in World Cup slalom, and 106th World Cup win in all disciplines. Rast's back-to-back runner-ups moved her ahead of Robinson into second place behind Shiffrin for the season, but almost 200 points behind. In the giant slalom the following week at Kranjska Gora, Slovenia, Robinson again failed to complete the first run, and Scheib and Rast again battled for the win, except this time Rast came out on top by 0.2 seconds for her first giant slalom victory, thus closing her deficit to Shiffrin (who was fifth) in the overall race to 140 points; Rast, who like all members of the Swiss team wore a black armband during the race, then dedicated her victory to the victims of a New Year's Eve fire in Crans-Montana, in her home canton. The next day, Rast (still wearing the black armband) and Shiffrin dominated in the slalom, but this time Rast narrowly bettered Shiffrin in each run to win by 0.14 seconds, break Shiffrin's season-long slalom winning streak, and win back-to-back races the same weekend, while the next-best skier (Rast's teammate Wendy Holdener) finished over a second and a half (actually 1.83 seconds) behind.