The short answer
The published Milano Cortina 2026 gold-medal specification is 500 grams of .999 silver plus 6 grams of .9999 gold. Olympic medal composition should always be tied to the particular Games.
Gold describes the award
An Olympic gold medal can be mostly silver. A particularly clear example is Milano Cortina 2026: the official medal announcement published by the Italian National Olympic Committee specifies 500 grams of .999 silver plus 6 grams of .9999 gold for the gold medal. The silver medal is specified as 500 grams of .999 silver.
Those figures distinguish the award's name from its material construction. The first-place medal contains real gold, but the much larger silver component supplies most of its metal mass. The announcement identifies Italy's state mint, the Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, as the maker, so the numbers relate to a named production programme rather than a generic souvenir.
Read fineness and weight separately
Fineness describes the proportion of precious metal within a material. A designation of .999 silver means 999 parts silver per 1,000 parts by mass. Grams describe quantity. Six grams of gold is therefore not the same statement as six percent gold, and a medal's complete weight need not equal its pure-silver content.
London 2012 provides another documented example. The Olympic Studies Centre's medal reference lists the gold medal as 92.5 percent silver, 1.34 percent gold, and copper for the remainder. It lists the silver medal as 92.5 percent silver with copper. These are the published specifications for that edition; they should not be copied into descriptions of every Olympic medal.
Design and history change the object
Paris 2024 illustrates why total weight needs context. The IOC's medal announcement gives weights of 529 grams for the gold medal and 525 grams for the silver medal, and says each medal includes 18 grams of iron from the Eiffel Tower. The hexagonal iron insert is a deliberate part of the design. Treating the full object's mass as silver would count that iron as precious metal.
Historical medals also need their own descriptions. The IOC dates the established first-, second-, and third-place gold, silver, and bronze award sequence to St Louis 1904. Its account describes those first-place medals as entirely gold. The modern silver-rich construction cannot simply be projected backward onto that earlier Games.
For collectors, begin with the edition, maker, and exact type of object. An athlete's award medal, a participation medal, and a commemorative coin need separate identification and specifications. The satisfying silver fact is already strong: official examples show substantial silver at the very top of the podium. Accurate descriptions make that connection more interesting, without confusing sporting achievement with a bullion calculation.
About this edition
Original source and editorial notes
Adapted from original material by Rich Silver. Original source card: Silver fact: supplied original card (publication date not established).
Reviewed 2026-11-04. Replaced the undated universal IOC-standard formula with official specifications for named Games. Kept the central silver-content observation while distinguishing fineness, gold coating, total object mass, and design additions. Avoided applying modern composition claims to every historical medal or to commercial commemoratives. The card has no verified publication date or public URL; none has been inferred. No source-card graphics are reproduced.