The Winter Olympics are held every four years.

How Often & Basic Pattern

  • The Winter Olympic Games take place once every four years , following a quadrennial cycle.
  • Since the early 1990s, the Winter and Summer Games have been staggered so that some type of Olympic Games happens every two years (Winter, then Summer, then Winter again, etc.).

Simple way to remember

If there was a Winter Olympics in 2022 (Beijing), the next Winter Games are in 2026 (Milan–Cortina), exactly four years later.

Extra Context & “Every 2 Years?” Forum Angle

On forums and quizzes, people sometimes get tripped up because “the Olympics” in general seem to happen every two years when you alternate Summer and Winter.

But if the question is specifically “winter olympics how often,” the clean, quiz-safe answer is every four years.

In other words:

  • All Olympics combined: there is usually some Olympic Games every two years.
  • Winter Olympics specifically: every four years.

TL;DR: The Winter Olympics are held every four years, with the Winter and Summer Games offset so that some Olympics occur every two years overall.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.