Winter Olympic Games to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, and the host of the 2026 Winter Olympics will be selected on June 23rd, 2019. , no city in the southern hemisphere has applied to host the cold-weather-dependent Winter Olympics, which are held in February at the height of the southern hemisphere summer. To date, twelve countries have participated in every Winter Olympic Games – Austria, Canada, Finland, France, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States. Six of those countries have earned medals at every Winter Olympic Games – Austria, Canada, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the United States. The
Olympic medal table first ranking system has been used occasionally by some American media outlets, newspapers in the United States primarily publish medal tables ordered by the total number of medals won. This difference in rankings has its origins in the early days of the Olympics, when the IOC did not publish or recognise medal tables. Before the 2002 Winter Olympics the difference in ranking system received scant notice, since in recent Olympic history the country that led in total medals also led in the gold count. However, during the 2002 Winter Olympics Germany won the highest number of medals (36), but earned