Olympic Athletes Launch Second Campaign to Ban Future Fossil Sponsorship

This is a reprint of an article published February 11, 2026, by The Energy Mix, an Ottawa-based community news site and e-digest on climate change, energy, and the shift off carbon (see original post here). It is reprinted here with the permission of the organization. You can read more articles by The Energy Mix, and sign up for their newsletter, by following this link.

A second athlete-led campaign, within days of the first, is urging the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to permanently and swiftly ban fossil fuel sponsorship, as both the reality and the dream of the winter Olympics disintegrates with rising global temperatures and that industry’s continued extraction and sales of the products that cause the problem.

Swedish cross-country skier Björn Sandström, leader of the For Future Games campaign, told The Energy Mix via Whatsapp that as someone who has skied since he was 10, it has been “impossible not to connect the dots” between the sport he loves, the warming climate, and the fossil fuel industry.

Describing the mission to get fossil advertising out of the Winter Olympics as “urgent,” Sandström said he and his peers are “seeking conversations and diplomacy with the IOC against fossil fuel interests,” adding: “We want to make it clear to the IOC that there is a vast understanding of this issue, and vast support.”

A Feb. 9 open letter from For Future Games urges the IOC to develop and formally adopt a clear policy that bans fossil fuel companies from sponsoring any future Olympic Games. 

Italy’s Eni, one of the world’s biggest oil companies, is a leading sponsor of the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics.

“The biggest threat to the Olympic dream is fossil fuels. As athletes, we are asking you to help remove their influence,” say the 88 Olympians and 53 hopefuls who have signed the For Future Games campaign letter to date.

The new open letter comes just days after Norwegian skier Nikolai Schirmer handed the IOC a Ski Fossil Free petition signed by more than 21,000 people, including professional athletes.

Urging the committee to demonstrate moral clarity, the For Future Games campaign’s letter recalls how the Canadian Olympics Committee took “a bold stand for public health” and banned tobacco sponsorship at the 1988 Calgary Winter Games. (Tobacco did not relinquish its grip on the podium easily: see here for a peer-reviewed analysis of the industry’s decades-long persistence in the outer orbits of Olympic advertising.)

“Just as tobacco was deemed incompatible with the physical health of athletes, fossil fuels are fundamentally incompatible with the survival of our sports,” say the FFG campaign letter signatories.

Fossil fuels are also an increasing threat to the survival of summer athletes, the letter adds. “As our winters melt, summer athletes are simultaneously being pushed to their physical limits by record-breaking heatwaves that gamble with athlete health.”

Replete with endnotes, the letter states that “governments and corporations are planning a fossil fuel output for 2030 that is 120% higher than what safe limits allow.” Fossil fuels account for “nearly 70%” of global greenhouse gas emissions, the athletes add, and the companies that extract these fuels “use the prestige of sports sponsorship to distract attention from the climate harm they are causing.”

The letter campaign launches less than a year after current IOC President Kirsty Coventry vowed to provide strong support for athletes pressing for climate action. “Safeguarding our planet is a responsibility I deeply believe in,” Coventry said in the final days of her campaign for the position. 

“It’s really nice the athletes have a platform to speak up, the IOC president said when asked by the BBC to comment on the Ski Fossil Free petition.

“I know they [the petition leaders] met with our team today and we are having conversations in order to be better, and for our stakeholders to be better,” she added. “But that takes time.”

Explicitly recalling their fellow athletes’ efforts to secure Coventry’s commitment to support their climate fight last spring, the For Future Games signatories urge the IOC to act swiftly to ban fossil fuel advertising.

“Given the acute threat to our sports and communities, there is no time to lose.”