BBC set 700 tiny athletes on fire to open the 2026 Winter Olympics

Every time the BBC cuts to its coverage of the 2026 Winter Olympics from Milano Cortina, viewers are greeted by a title sequence made with real fire.

The opening film, titled “Trails Will Blaze,” was produced by London-based animation studio NOMINT in partnership with BBC Creative, the broadcaster’s in-house agency.

It depicts a single athlete moving through a series of winter sports, skiing, curling, speed skating, snowboarding, across miniature landscapes modeled on the Italian Dolomites. As the figure moves, a trail of flame ignites behind.

When the athlete falls, the fire goes out. When they get back up, it reignites.

There is no computer-generated fire in the film. Every flame, spark and glow was captured practically, one frame at a time.

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“The film is a celebration of the trails athletes blaze at the Winter Games and just like they push the limits of their sports, we wanted to push the limits of stop motion,” said Jess Oudot, creative director at BBC Creative.

The production used approximately 700 individually 3D-printed athlete figures, a technique known as replacement animation. Each figure was designed and animated digitally, then physically manufactured so that swapping one printed figure for the next, frame by frame, produced the illusion of fluid motion.

The fire presented a different problem.

Stop-motion animation depends on precise control, every element in a scene must be moved in careful increments between exposures. Fire does not cooperate with that process. The production team developed 14 separate combustion techniques to work within the format, including steel wire, mushroom powder and iron filings to generate sparks, along with light-painting methods in which flames were physically moved through the scene between frames.

“This project was technically demanding and creatively exhilarating,” said Yannis Konstantinidis, co-founder and creative director of NOMINT, who directed the film. “From our very first conversation with BBC Creative, we knew we had the chance to pursue the near-impossible. It demanded absolute trust and a willingness to take real creative risks in pursuit of something extraordinary.”

The studio spent more than a month testing fire behavior, camera exposure and lighting before principal photography began. The shoot itself took place in a specialist fire-safe studio with a team of pyrotechnicians from Armoury FX on set throughout production.

Grounded in real athletic movement

One detail that shaped the animation was NOMINT’s decision to base every movement on actual Olympic broadcast footage.

The team translated real performances into 3D models, refining the motion only enough to make the figures printable and workable for stop-motion. Some shots used replacement animation with 3D-printed elements, while others, such as a close-up of ice skating boots, were animated using traditional techniques.

The approach also extended to how fire was used to distinguish each sport.

Skiing sequences used fire effects that conveyed speed and force. Curling sequences favored precision and control. The team combined static flame effects, sparks and light painting, sometimes layering multiple techniques within a single frame and compositing different passes together.

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A BBC tradition, built on craft

The “Trails Will Blaze” film continues a pattern at BBC Creative that stretches back through several major sporting events.

For the 2018 FIFA World Cup, the agency produced a title sequence in which every frame was individually embroidered, using more than 227,000 meters of thread across 600 frames of stop-motion tapestry animation. For the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, the agency collaborated with director Balazs Simon to create “Extreme by Nature,” a mixed-media animation featuring 3D-printed athletes inside and around blocks of ice.

In each case, the production method itself became part of the story.

Paul Bailey and Russell Hendrie, senior creatives at BBC Creative, said the brief for Milano Cortina was to create something that could function as both a promotional trailer and a title sequence for the broadcaster’s live coverage.

“As soon as we arrived at the word ‘trailblazers,’ the visual world fell right into place,” Bailey and Hendrie said. “Every Winter Olympic campaign uses snow and ice, so we knew that trails of fire blazing down mountains would stand out a mile.”

The pair described the production as likely “the only stop-motion animation to be filmed in a specialist fire-safe studio with a team of pyrotechnicians.”

The film is set to a new arrangement of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Requiem,” arranged by Alex Baranowski and recorded live at the Royal Albert Hall by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Chorus and the Crouch End Festival Chorus. The choice of an Italian composer was deliberate, given that the 2026 Games are hosted in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo.

The film has drawn wide attention in part because of its relationship to an ongoing industry conversation about artificial intelligence and computer-generated imagery in advertising and broadcast production. Ad Age, in its coverage, described the film as “another triumph of non-AI filmmaking.”

Bailey and Hendrie addressed the subject directly.

“I hate to bring this back to AI, but I hope the industry will see the value and importance of keeping real craft in advertising,” they said in an interview with Little Black Book.

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The film serves as the main opening title sequence for each BBC broadcast of the 2026 Winter Olympics.

Behind the scenes featurette

Project credits

BBC Creative

• Director – Justin Bairamian
• Head of Production – James Wood
• Interim Head of Planning – Rhonwen Lally
• Executive Creative Director – Rasmus Smith Bech
• Executive Creative Director – Dave Monk
• Creative Director – Matt Leach
• Creative Director – Jess Oudot
• Senior Creative – Paul Bailey
• Senior Creative – Russell Hendrie
• Senior Producer – Rachel Roberts
• Project Manager – Hattie Buxton
• Planner – Asa Nowers
• Production Manager – Emi Bozzi
• Senior Designer – Amy Fullalove
• Lead Designer – Daniel Cooper
• Motion Designer – Andrea Stragapede

BBC Marketing

• Director, Marketing & Audiences – Paul Davies
• Head of Marketing, BBC Sports – Liv Slack
• Marketing Manager – David Wheadon
• Marketing Executive – Kate Plowright
• Media Portfolio Lead – Marc Jones
• Campaign Planner – Eleanor O’Kane

NOMINT

• Director – Yannis Konstantinidis
• Executive Producer – Marilena Vatseri and Christos Lefakis
• Producer – John Mouratis
• DOP – Toby Howell
• Motion Control – Max Halstead
• Phantom – Theo Cockrean
• Camera Assistant – George Warren
• Gaffer – Jack Lilley
• Spark – Idris Rhys
• Animation Rigger – Robin Jackson
• Production Designer – Gordon Allen
• Assistant AD – Ben Coate
• Stop motion Animators – Rhiannon Evans and Dario Imbrogno
• Pyrotechnics – Armoury FX
• SFX Supervisor – Matthew Strange
• SFX Coordinator – Matt Beckwith
• Lead Technician – Callum Nixon
• VFX Supervisor – Matthieu Landour
• Compositing – Tony Comley
• Concept Artist – Michał Sawtyruk
• Matte Painting – Cedric Tomacruz
• 2D Animatic – Rocketpanda
• 3D Animator – Constantinos Amvrosiadis
• 3D Animator Assistant – Dimitris Liatsos
• Key Visual Artist – Kristina St-Polezajeva
• Medics – Tom Wheeler and Liam Lagan
• Runners – Elias Avramidis, Natalie Scott and Sonia Amini

BDS

• Behind the Scenes Videographer – Ben Dowden

Black Kite

• Colourist – George Kyriacou
• VFX Artist – Alistair Hamer
• Producer – Carmen Hogg

750mph

• Sound Design – Sam Ashwell
• Sound Design – Mike Bovill
• Head of Production – Rachel Saxon

Music “Requiem”

• Composer – Giuseppe Verdi
• Arranger – Alex Baranowski
• Performer – BBC Symphony Orchestra
• Performer – BBC Symphony Chorus
• Performer – Crouch End Festival Chorus
• Chief Conductor – BBC Symphony Orchestra Sakari Oramo