North Korea holds own national games after failing to qualify for Winter Olympics

North Korea last took part in a Winter Olympics in the South Korean city of PyeongChang

North Korea has opened its national winter games, state media confirmed, with the isolated nation's athletes conspicuously absent from the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.

The 2026 National Winter Games began on Wednesday at the Paektusan area sports village in Samjiyon, a mountainous city close to the Chinese border, according to the official KCNA news agency. Sports clubs representing state bodies and major industrial sites are set to compete in more than 50 events across five winter disciplines, including ice hockey, figure skating, and skiing.

This domestic sporting spectacle unfolds as North Korea's athletes failed to secure qualification places for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy, according to South Korean media and international skating results.

North Korea’s best Winter Olympics results

It last took part in a Winter Olympics in the South Korean city of PyeongChang in 2018, when it sent 22 athletes in five sports and used the Games as a stage for a rare diplomatic thaw with the South, which included a joint women's ice hockey team.

Pyongyang sharply limited sports participation overseas during the COVID-19 pandemic and was suspended from the International Olympic Committee until the end of 2022 after deciding not to send a team to the Tokyo Summer Olympics.

South Korea President Moon Jae-in, IOC President Thomas Bach, North Korea's nominal head of state Kim Yong Nam and Kim Yo Jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, greet players after the women's hockey game between Switzerland and the combined Koreas at the Winter Olympics. (Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

North Korea's best Winter Olympic results have come on the ice. It won its first and only silver medal in women's speed skating at Innsbruck in 1964, and claimed a bronze medal in short-track speed skating at the 1992 Albertville Games.

Its best international prospects more recently have centred on pairs figure skating, but its top duo fell short at a final Olympic qualifier event in Beijing last September.

The Samjiyon venue highlights a broader drive by leader Kim Jong Un to develop showcase projects in the area near Mount Paektu, a politically important region that Pyongyang has promoted as a tourism zone and where KCNA said Kim attended the opening of new luxury hotels late last year.

Japan is apparently mulling North Korea’s participation in the 2026 Asian Games after the reclusive regime expressed interest in taking part, despite sanctions that ban entry of North Korean citizens into the country.

Japan is set to host the Asian Games from 19 September to 4 October next year in Aichi Prefecture and its capital Nagoya with 45 member countries of the Olympic Council of Asia participating in the event.

North Korean officials have told the organising committee of the Asian Games that it would send a delegation of more than 260 members to Japan to participate in 17 events, including football, people familiar with the matter told Kyodo News.