FIS has not threatened to take the World Championships away from Falun. Its own rules leave visas to Sweden
A claim has been spreading through Russian, Norwegian and German ski media for several days: that FIS has warned Sweden it could lose next winter’s World Championships in Falun if it refuses visas to Russian neutral athletes.
Dmitry Svishchev, president of the Russian ski federation, told RIA Novosti on 23 October that FIS had “quite rightly, not threatened but warned” that the championships could be moved to another country, “for example to Italy”.
FIS has not said that on the record. When Russian media asked FIS directly whether Sweden could be stripped of the championships, its answer did not mention moving them. It repeated, almost word for word, its own policy for neutral athletes, which reads: “Notwithstanding the above eligibility, the host country visa and entry policies remain in place and are determined solely by the host country. FIS bears no responsibility for denial of visas or entry to any person granted eligibility under the FIS Individual Neutral Athlete Policy.”
That sentence is in the version FIS published in September for this season. The FIS questions-and-answers page on neutral athletes has carried the same wording since December 2025. FIS communications director Bruno Sassi gave Sveriges Radio the same message on 21 October: national laws stand above FIS rules, and FIS has no view on which individuals a country lets in.
Where the idea came from
The earliest version we found is a column by NRK commentator Jan Petter Saltvedt on 22 October. He wrote that if Sweden really closes its borders to Russian and Belarusian skiers, “the whole World Championships could actually end up being moved”, and that FIS could “in theory” threaten that. He named Val di Fiemme, last winter’s Olympic venue, as a natural alternative. That was his opinion, not a FIS statement.
Langrenn.com ran the same argument that day under the headline “Sweden can be stripped of the World Championships in Falun”. From there, Russian outlets attributed the warning to FIS.
Svishchev also argued that the Swedish federation, when it bid for the championships, knew it had to provide visa support for all athletes. We have not seen Falun’s hosting agreement. FIS has not said publicly what it would do if Sweden refused visas.
What Sweden is actually doing
Nothing has been decided. Migration minister Johan Forssell said on 21 October that the government is analysing what legal options exist, for example whether a person poses a threat to Sweden’s security. On 22 and 23 October he discussed the question with his Nordic counterparts. “We will have a meeting soon to go through concrete measures,” he told Expressen.
There is also a practical catch. Russian citizens need a Schengen visa, and one issued by another member state is generally valid in Sweden too. Savelii Korostelev raced the Falun World Cup as a neutral athlete last March. We covered the Swedish push and its limits in our report last week.
The stakes are growing. The FIS list of approved neutral athletes dated 23 October has 37 cross-country skiers, 35 of them Russian, and Aleksandr Bolshunov is still waiting for a decision. Neutral athletes can only race individual events in Falun; relays and team sprints stay closed to them.