If you've been watching the 2026 Olympics this week, you've heard everything from Daft Punk to the Spice Girls to a Rachmaninov piano concerto blasting through the Milano Ice Skating Arena. You may have also heard about the drama — a Spanish skater nearly losing his Minions music days before competition, an artist finding out on social media that an Olympic gold medalist used his song without permission, and a Czech ice dance team getting called out for skating to AI-generated music.

Music has always been the emotional backbone of figure skating. But behind the artistry and goosebumps, there's a maze of rules, restrictions, and legal landmines that most fans — and honestly, a lot of skaters — don't fully understand. And right now, at these Olympics, it's all blowing up in real time.

Let's start from the beginning.

For Over 100 Years, Figure Skating Was Classical Music Only

When figure skating first appeared at the 1908 London Olympics (making it one of the oldest Winter Olympic sports, even though it debuted at a summer Games), athletes performed to classical music. Not because they wanted to — because they had to. The International Skating Union banned music with lyrics in all competitive programs. The thinking was that vocals would be distracting, that the audience should focus on the skater's movement and artistry rather than listening to somebody sing.

This rule held for over a century. If you grew up watching skating in the '80s, '90s, or 2000s, you were watching a sport where Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, Bizet's Carmen, and Chopin's nocturnes weren't just popular choices — they were basically the only options. Film scores became common too (Tara Lipinski skated to the Anastasia soundtrack in 1998), but the no-lyrics rule remained firm. Vocals of any kind, even wordless singing, could earn a point deduction.

There was one exception to the no-lyrics rule. Ice dance — which has always been the most musically driven discipline — allowed lyrics starting in the 1997-98 season. But singles and pairs skaters had to wait nearly two more decades.

2014: The Rule Change That Changed Everything

In 2012, the ISU voted to allow music with lyrics in singles and pairs skating programs. But in a very ISU move, they decided the change wouldn't take effect until after the 2014 Sochi Olympics. So Sochi was the last lyrics-free Games. The 2018 PyeongChang Olympics were the first where every discipline could use vocal music.

The reason for the change? Viewership was declining. The ISU wanted to attract younger audiences, and the thinking was that letting skaters perform to pop songs, hip-hop, and modern music would make the sport more relatable. As French figure skating coach Katia Krier put it at the time: "We have to innovate. Our sport is already losing viewers, but we have to give people the desire to watch us."

The change worked. At the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics, skaters performed to Beyoncé, Adele, Coldplay, the Beatles, Elvis Presley, and Ed Sheeran. At the 2022 Beijing Games, Nathan Chen won gold skating to Elton John's "Rocket Man" — and John himself effusively praised the performance, later collaborating with Chen on a music video.

But the rule change also opened a can of worms nobody saw coming.

The Copyright Problem That's Exploding at the 2026 Olympics

Here's the thing about classical music: it's in the public domain. Beethoven can't sue you. Tchaikovsky doesn't have a publishing deal. For over 100 years, figure skaters never had to think about music licensing because the music they used was free.

Modern music is a completely different story. When a skater performs to a Lady Gaga song at the Olympics — broadcast globally to millions of viewers, replayed endlessly on social media, archived on streaming platforms — that's not the same as playing it at a private practice session. That's a public performance, potentially a synchronization use, and it requires permission from the songwriter, the publisher, the record label, and sometimes the performer themselves.

At the 2022 Beijing Olympics, the issue came to a head when American pairs skaters Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier were sued for using a cover of "House of the Rising Sun" by indie rock band Heavy Young Heathens. The lawsuit, which also named NBC as a defendant for broadcasting the performance, was settled later that year for an undisclosed amount.

That lawsuit was supposed to be a wake-up call. Instead, the 2026 Olympics have been even messier.

So How Are Skaters Supposed to Clear Their Music?

The short answer: it's complicated, messy, and everyone seems confused.

The ISU works with a third-party company called ClicknClear, which acts as a clearinghouse for music licensing. In theory, skaters submit their music choices through this system, and ClicknClear negotiates the performance and broadcast rights. In practice, it's not that simple.

Copyright ownership is layered. A single song might involve rights from the songwriter, the composer, the publisher, the record label, and the performer. If the skater is using a cover version, the original songwriter still holds rights. If the song appeared in a film, the studio might hold additional rights. If the skater uses cuts from multiple songs spliced together — which most do — each piece needs to be cleared separately. And international broadcast rights (which apply at the Olympics, obviously) add yet another layer of complexity.

U.S. Figure Skating has tried to help by working with performance rights organizations ASCAP and BMI to secure blanket licenses that cover a large catalog of songs. A 2024 U.S. Figure Skating memo strongly recommended that "all music being used for competitions, shows, training, and other background or intermission music" be 100% cleared through ASCAP, BMI, or both. But the memo used the word "recommended" — not "required."

Not every artist is upset about it, though. Retired Canadian pairs skater Meagan Duhamel, a two-time Olympian, said she'd be thrilled to have someone skate to her music: "I'd be so honored that someone wants to skate to my music and give the music some amazing exposure." She recalled that for the 2018 Olympics, the artist whose music she used was so excited she flew to PyeongChang to watch in person. And after Nathan Chen won gold in Beijing skating to "Rocket Man," Elton John couldn't stop gushing about it.

But as Alexandra Roberts, a copyright law professor at Northeastern University, explained: the system is broken not because artists are greedy, but because this is uncharted territory. "This international use in the context of the Olympics, using songs with lyrics with rights holders who are alive and enforcing their rights, is really pretty new. We don't have a lot of precedent and these questions are untested."

The Rules You Actually Need to Know

What Skaters Are Actually Choosing Right Now

The music landscape at the 2026 Olympics has been genuinely fun. Here are some of the standout choices from Milan so far:

Ilia Malinin is skating his short program to "Running" by NF, a rapper from Michigan — one of the rare instances of someone using rap music at the Olympics. Malinin has said he listens to the song almost every day and sometimes sings along to the lyrics while skating. "The story that he goes through reminds me and makes me feel similar to my life in the skating world," Malinin told Olympics.com.

Amber Glenn is performing her short program to Madonna's "Like a Prayer" and her free skate incorporates music from CLANN (the now-famous copyright incident). Madison Chock and Evan Bates used Lenny Kravitz for their rhythm dance. The French team of Lopareva and Brissaud performed their rhythm dance to a Daft Punk and Eiffel 65 mashup — and will do their free dance to Björk. Britain's Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson went full Spice Girls for the rhythm dance, while Italy's Matteo Rizzo moved the home crowd to tears skating to the Interstellar soundtrack.

And then there's Guarino Sabaté, who skated to the Minions. In a Minions costume. At the Olympics. And somehow, after all that copyright drama, pulled it off.

The old days of Carmen-or-bust are long gone.

The Warhorses Aren't Going Anywhere

That said, classical music isn't dead in figure skating. Certain pieces — known in the skating world as "warhorses" — keep coming back decade after decade. Carmen. Swan Lake. Romeo and Juliet. Scheherazade. The Firebird. These pieces are popular not just because they're free to use, but because their dramatic structure — with builds, crescendos, and emotional peaks — naturally matches what a skating program needs.

At the 2026 Olympics, Stephen Gogolev skated to Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2. Japan's Shun Sato performed to Stravinsky's Firebird. Several skaters are still going instrumental.

Former Olympic judge Joe Inman put it well: "I have no trouble hearing Carmen again. What I do have trouble with is how it's cut. Sometimes people use the same phrase of music twice to make things work with the timing they need. But instead of finding a professional to help them, they cut it in a way that becomes totally asymmetrical."

In other words — the music might be the same, but some skaters butcher the edit.

What Comes Next

The copyright chaos at these Olympics has made one thing clear: the skating world needs a better system. The ISU's partnership with ClicknClear is a start, but as Justin Dillon, head of the high-performance program for U.S. Figure Skating, put it: "Things change rapidly every day, and we're just trying to understand what this landscape looks like. There's still so much to learn in this space."

The AI music question is only going to get bigger. If Czech skaters are using AI-generated songs to sidestep licensing in 2026, that's going to become a trend — and the ISU will need to decide where they stand on it.

But one thing hasn't changed in 118 years of Olympic figure skating: the right song, skated well, still gives you chills. Whether it's Boléro on Valentine's Day in 1984 or a rapper from Michigan in Milan in 2026, the music is what makes you feel something. And that's the whole point.

The women's individual event starts February 17. The pairs free skate — where Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps are planning the first-ever assisted backflip in Olympic pairs — is February 15. Keep watching. The best music moments of these Games might not have happened yet.