About this chart race
Norway won four of the seventeen gold medals at the first Winter Olympics, in Chamonix in 1924 — exactly as many as Finland, so the race opens with the two of them level. From 1928 Norway led on its own, and it stayed there for the next 48 years: 20 golds to the United States' 10 by 1936, 31 to 17 by 1952, 47 to the Soviet Union's 38 by 1972.
The Soviet Union entered the Winter Games only in 1956 and won seven golds at its first attempt. Twenty years later it went past Norway by a single medal, 51 to 50, at Innsbruck in 1976, and it held the lead through 1980, 1984 and 1988. It finished on 78 golds and never competed again — so its bar simply stops, and it stays top of the table through the 1992 and 1994 Games while Norway climbs. Norway finally reclaimed first place in 1998 with 83, ten years after the Soviet Union's last Winter Olympics.
Since then nobody has been close. Norway finished Milan-Cortina 2026 on 166 golds, ahead of the United States on 126 and Germany on 113, and its 18 golds at those Games are the largest haul any country has ever taken from a single Winter Olympics, beating its own 16 from Beijing 2022. Germany's 113 covers only the years it competed as one country: the 39 won by East Germany, the 11 won by West Germany and the 8 won by the United Team of Germany are separate bars, because the IOC counts them separately. The same applies to the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, the Unified Team of 1992 and the two neutral Russian teams of 2018 and 2022.
Further down, the Netherlands went from 29 golds in 2010 to 63 in 2026, almost all of them won on the speed-skating oval. Italy's 10 golds as host in 2026 were comfortably its best Winter Games — its previous best was 7 in 1994 — and lifted it above France. In total 43 countries have won a Winter Olympic gold, and four of them have won exactly one: Uzbekistan in 1994, Bulgaria in 1998, Latvia in 2014 and Brazil, whose first arrived in 2026. One further gold, awarded in 1924, is credited to a mixed team of athletes from different countries rather than to any nation, and is left out of this race.
This animated ranking shows how cumulative winter olympic gold medals changed across 43 series between 1924 and 2026. The bars re-order themselves as the years advance, so overtakes are visible as they happen rather than hidden inside a table. Use the list on the left to choose exactly who competes, drag the slider to jump to any year, or open the table view to read the underlying numbers.
As of 2026, Norway leads with 166.
Included in this race
Norway, United States, Germany, Canada, Soviet Union, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, Netherlands, Italy, France, Russia, Finland, East Germany, South Korea, China, Japan, Great Britain, Czech Republic, West Germany, Unified Team, Australia, United Team of Germany, Belarus, Poland, Slovenia, ROC, Slovakia, Estonia, Croatia, Ukraine, Spain, Olympic Athletes from Russia, New Zealand, Liechtenstein, Kazakhstan, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Uzbekistan, Latvia, Bulgaria, Brazil.
Source
Data from Wikipedia - Winter Olympics medal tables. Every figure shown comes from this source — nothing is estimated or generated.
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