Why the Future of Hosting May Depend Less on Construction Than Coordination

Strategic Briefing

Executive Summary

Switzerland’s proposal to host the 2038 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games represents far more than an alternative approach to organising a global sporting event. It offers a case study in how advanced societies may increasingly manage complexity through coordination rather than expansion.

Instead of concentrating investment in a single Olympic city, Switzerland proposes a distributed national model built around existing infrastructure, regional institutions and shared public-private responsibility. The result is an organisational philosophy that shifts attention away from construction and towards governance, resilience and institutional capacity.

This Strategic Briefing examines Switzerland 2038 not as an Olympic bid alone, but as an emerging model of national coordination. It explores how federalism, infrastructure, capital, identity and legacy interact within a decentralised system—and why the lessons may prove increasingly relevant for Europe’s own long-term challenges in energy, technology, mobility and industrial policy.

Ultimately, the significance of Switzerland 2038 lies not in whether the Games are awarded. It lies in the broader question the proposal raises.

Can a decentralised democracy organise global complexity without sacrificing regional autonomy, democratic legitimacy or public trust?

At a Glance

Before exploring the proposal in detail, eight observations capture why Switzerland 2038 deserves attention beyond the Olympic movement.

• Hosting shifts from construction to coordination. Switzerland proposes organising the Games through existing national infrastructure rather than creating an entirely new Olympic city.
• Federalism becomes operational infrastructure. Political institutions are not merely responsible for governing the project—they become part of the delivery system itself.
• Distributed responsibility does not eliminate dependency. Even decentralised systems rely on critical nodes whose failure could affect the wider network.
• Financial liability differs from political responsibility. Private guarantees may absorb commercial losses, but governments remain responsible for maintaining essential public systems when disruption occurs.
• Legacy is measured through institutional capability. The most enduring outcome may not be new buildings, but stronger coordination between governments, transport networks and regional institutions.
• Climate changes the architecture of hosting. Sustainability increasingly depends on adapting events to existing capacity rather than continually expanding physical infrastructure.
• The proposal offers lessons beyond sport. Many organisational challenges visible in Switzerland 2038 also apply to Europe’s energy transition, digital infrastructure, industrial strategy and technological sovereignty.
• The central question is institutional rather than sporting. Switzerland’s proposal ultimately asks whether a country can transform distributed authority into collective operational capacity.

Why This Matters

Olympic bids are usually analysed through the lenses of sport, tourism or economics. This Strategic Briefing takes a different approach.

Switzerland 2038 is examined as an exercise in institutional architecture. The proposal provides an opportunity to observe how a highly decentralised democracy attempts to coordinate multiple governments, transport systems, private organisations and local communities around a single international objective. That makes Switzerland an unusually relevant case study.

Across Europe, governments increasingly face projects that resemble the organisational complexity of a mega-event. Electrification, semiconductor production, AI infrastructure, climate adaptation and defence all require different institutions to function as parts of the same system.

The challenge is rarely the absence of infrastructure. More often, it is the absence of coordination.

Switzerland therefore raises a broader question. Can coordination itself become a form of strategic infrastructure?

Introduction

Hosting the Olympic Games has traditionally been associated with scale. New stadiums. New transport systems. New neighbourhoods. Entire districts transformed to accommodate a few weeks of global attention.

For decades, this model shaped the public imagination of what hosting meant. Cities competed through increasingly ambitious construction projects, hoping that the visibility of the Games would justify the scale of investment required to stage them.

Switzerland proposes something fundamentally different. Rather than concentrating activity within a single metropolitan centre, the country is developing a proposal that distributes responsibility across existing venues, transport networks and regional communities. Instead of asking one city to become temporarily larger than itself, Switzerland asks whether an entire country can function as a coordinated host.

At first glance, this appears to be a logistical decision. A closer examination suggests something much more significant.

The proposal represents a different philosophy of organisation. It assumes that resilience is created less through expansion than through coordination. That existing infrastructure may generate greater long-term value than iconic construction. And that institutional trust can become just as important as physical capacity. These ideas extend far beyond sport.

Increasingly, advanced societies are confronted with projects that exceed the capabilities of any single institution. Energy networks connect multiple regions. Digital infrastructure spans national borders. Artificial intelligence requires cooperation between governments, universities and private companies. Climate adaptation depends on decisions made simultaneously at local, regional and national levels.In each case, the challenge is remarkably similar.

The question is no longer whether societies possess sufficient resources. The question is whether they possess sufficient organisational capacity to coordinate those resources effectively.

Switzerland 2038 therefore deserves attention not because it promises a different Olympic Games. It deserves attention because it offers a different way of thinking about complexity itself.

From Host City to Host Country

Most Olympic bids begin with a city. The city becomes the centre of gravity. Infrastructure radiates outwards from a metropolitan core. Political leadership, transport planning, security coordination and international communication are largely organised through a single urban framework.

This model offers obvious advantages. Responsibility is concentrated. Decision-making is relatively clear. Visitors experience the Games through one recognisable destination.

Yet concentration also produces concentration of risk. Construction schedules become compressed. Budgets escalate. Transport systems experience extraordinary pressure. Entire neighbourhoods are redesigned around an event lasting only a few weeks.

When the Games conclude, host cities are often left confronting a difficult question. What happens to infrastructure built primarily for exceptional demand?

Switzerland reverses that logic. Instead of constructing a temporary Olympic city, it proposes activating a permanent national network.

Existing mountain resorts. Existing sporting venues. Existing railway systems. Existing regional institutions. Existing communities. The country itself becomes the organising platform.

This shift appears subtle. In reality, it changes the entire architecture of hosting. Infrastructure no longer exists primarily to serve the Games. The Games must adapt to the capacity and character of existing infrastructure.

That inversion carries profound consequences. Construction becomes secondary. Coordination becomes primary.

The task is no longer to create a city capable of hosting a global event. The task is to enable an entire country to operate as one interconnected system.

The host is no longer a city containing the Games. The host becomes a country coordinating them.

This transformation introduces both opportunity and uncertainty. Existing infrastructure may reduce financial and environmental costs. Regional participation may strengthen national ownership. Institutional continuity may create a more durable legacy than iconic construction ever could.

Yet distribution introduces a different form of complexity. Responsibility becomes shared. Authority becomes layered. Dependencies become less visible. The success of the proposal therefore depends on a capability that receives comparatively little public attention.

Coordination.

Not simply between venues. But between governments, transport operators, sporting organisations, emergency services, private companies and local communities.

Hosting, in other words, becomes an exercise in governing complexity. And that is precisely what makes Switzerland 2038 such an important case study—not only for the Olympic movement, but for Europe itself.

I. Governance

Federalism as Operational Infrastructure

Switzerland’s federal structure is often described in constitutional terms. Power is distributed between the Confederation, the cantons and the communes. Decisions are taken as closely as possible to the communities they affect. Regional autonomy is not regarded as an administrative inconvenience, but as one of the foundations of political legitimacy. Under ordinary circumstances, this system offers clear advantages.

Local governments possess detailed knowledge of regional conditions. Public trust is reinforced through proximity between institutions and citizens. Diverse linguistic and cultural communities can shape policies that reflect their own circumstances while remaining part of a broader national framework.

Switzerland 2038 places that philosophy under an entirely different kind of pressure. A distributed Olympic model cannot simply rely on federalism as a constitutional principle. It requires federalism to function as operational infrastructure.

Every competition venue, transport corridor, security arrangement and emergency response becomes part of a national system whose components remain governed by different authorities. The challenge therefore extends beyond administration. It becomes architectural.

Can institutions designed to distribute authority also generate sufficient unity of action when confronted with an event operating to fixed international deadlines?

The proposal suggests that they can. Yet decentralisation introduces another strategic consideration. Distributed authority does not automatically eliminate dependency. Within every network, certain regions, transport corridors and institutions inevitably become critical nodes whose participation is essential to the functioning of the wider system.

In Switzerland’s case, local democratic legitimacy is one of the proposal’s greatest strengths. At the same time, it creates the possibility that a relatively small number of locally legitimate decisions could have national consequences.

A referendum in a strategically important canton. A delay in approving essential infrastructure. A withdrawal of political support.

Each represents an entirely legitimate democratic outcome. Yet each could influence an international project whose commitments extend well beyond regional boundaries.

The challenge is therefore not to weaken federalism. Nor is it to reduce democratic participation. The challenge is to design a governance architecture capable of absorbing disagreement without allowing one critical node to compromise the functioning of the wider network.

A distributed system is only resilient when no single point of refusal can disable the wider network.

This observation reaches far beyond Switzerland. Increasingly, Europe depends upon distributed systems whose success requires cooperation between autonomous actors.

Energy grids. Semiconductor ecosystems. Digital infrastructure. Cross-border transport. Artificial intelligence. Each depends upon institutions capable of making independent decisions while simultaneously contributing to a shared strategic objective.

The Swiss proposal therefore raises a broader question. Perhaps governance itself should increasingly be understood as infrastructure. Not because it replaces physical assets. But because it determines whether those assets can function together under conditions of growing complexity.

The Olympic Games may last only a few weeks. The institutional lessons could prove far more enduring.

II. Infrastructure

Existing Capacity as Strategic Advantage

Infrastructure has long been one of the defining expressions of Olympic ambition. For decades, host nations demonstrated confidence through construction, using the Games as catalysts for large-scale physical transformation. Stadiums became national landmarks, airports expanded, motorway networks were extended and railway systems modernised, while entire urban districts were redesigned in anticipation of a global audience. Olympic hosting was therefore rarely about sport alone. It also became a statement about economic confidence, technological capability and national prestige.

Switzerland proposes a remarkably different philosophy.

Rather than asking infrastructure to adapt to the Games, the proposal asks the Games to adapt to infrastructure that already exists. Existing railway networks form the backbone of national mobility, established winter sports venues continue to fulfil the roles for which they were originally designed, and mountain communities become active participants rather than locations reshaped by extraordinary construction programmes. The project is therefore less concerned with creating new capacity than with activating capacity that already exists.

This distinction may appear subtle, yet its implications are profound.

For much of the twentieth century, infrastructure policy was largely associated with expansion. Progress was measured by what societies added: more roads, larger airports, additional railway lines and new public facilities. Today, however, a different question is emerging. Increasingly, governments are asking how existing infrastructure can deliver greater value, how investment can be extended rather than replaced, and how resilience can be strengthened without continually increasing physical scale.

The challenge is no longer building systems. It is enabling systems to work together.

Those questions are no longer confined to transport policy. They increasingly define debates about electricity grids, digital infrastructure, water management and industrial production. Switzerland’s Olympic proposal therefore reflects a broader transition that is becoming visible across Europe. Infrastructure is no longer evaluated solely by what societies build. It is increasingly judged by how intelligently they organise, connect and utilise the assets they already possess.

Physical Infrastructure and Organisational Infrastructure

This shift also challenges a long-standing assumption about the nature of infrastructure itself.

Traditionally, infrastructure has been understood as something tangible: railways, roads, electricity grids, telecommunication networks and buildings. These physical assets remain indispensable, but projects of growing complexity increasingly depend upon another layer that is far less visible. Alongside physical infrastructure exists what might be described as organisational infrastructure—the systems of coordination that allow physical assets to function as part of a coherent whole.

Information flows, shared operational awareness, emergency planning, digital coordination, decision-making procedures and institutional trust rarely appear on engineering drawings. They cannot be photographed in the same way as bridges or railway stations. Yet without them, physical infrastructure rapidly loses much of its strategic value.

A railway network, for example, depends upon far more than tracks and rolling stock. It functions because operators, emergency services, maintenance organisations and public authorities continuously coordinate their activities. Airports operate according to the same principle. The physical structure enables movement, but organisational coordination determines whether movement remains reliable.

Switzerland illustrates this relationship particularly well. Because venues are distributed across different regions, coordination itself becomes part of the infrastructure. Every railway timetable, security protocol, weather forecast and communication channel contributes to the functioning of the wider system. The infrastructure supporting the Games is therefore not only physical; it is institutional.

This creates two interconnected layers. The first moves people. The second synchronises decisions.One enables mobility. The other enables cooperation.

Hosting complexity ultimately depends on whether organisational infrastructure proves as reliable as physical infrastructure.

Increasingly, that observation extends far beyond sport. Artificial intelligence depends upon governance frameworks as much as computing power. Modern electricity grids rely on digital control systems as much as transmission lines. Global supply chains function because information travels as efficiently as goods themselves.

Infrastructure, in other words, is becoming progressively more organisational.

Coordination as National Capability

This evolution also changes the meaning of resilience. Traditionally, resilient infrastructure referred to infrastructure capable of resisting disruption. Bridges were designed to withstand heavy traffic, railway systems to continue operating during severe weather, and electricity grids to absorb equipment failures without widespread interruption. Those engineering capabilities remain fundamental.

Increasingly, however, resilience depends on something else.

No infrastructure can eliminate uncertainty altogether. Extreme weather, cyber incidents, transport disruptions or unexpected operational challenges will continue to occur. The decisive question is no longer whether disruption can be prevented entirely, but how effectively institutions coordinate their response once disruption emerges.

In that sense, coordination becomes a strategic capability in its own right.

Countries increasingly compete not only through the quality of their physical assets, but through their ability to synchronise complex systems under pressure. Switzerland appears to recognise this reality. The proposal relies less on spectacular construction than on confidence that existing institutions can cooperate effectively across geographical, political and organisational boundaries.

That confidence may ultimately prove to be one of Switzerland’s greatest strategic assets. Infrastructure is no longer simply something societies possess. Increasingly, it is something they must continuously organise.

The Coordination Layer

Complexity as National Capability

Switzerland 2038 is frequently described as a decentralised Olympic proposal. That description is accurate, but it does not fully capture the significance of what is being proposed. Decentralisation is not the objective in itself; it is the organisational condition from which a more fundamental capability must emerge: coordination.

The proposal assumes that dozens of independent organisations can operate as components of a single national system. Federal authorities, cantonal governments, municipalities, railway operators, emergency services, sporting federations, private partners and volunteers all retain their own responsibilities and decision-making authority. None disappears into a central command structure. Instead, they remain autonomous while aligning their activities around a shared purpose.

This represents a different understanding of organisational capacity. Success depends less upon hierarchy than upon alignment, less upon control than upon cooperation, and less upon institutional uniformity than upon interoperability. Increasingly, these characteristics define the most resilient societies.

The same pattern is becoming visible far beyond the Olympic movement. Electricity grids are operated by multiple organisations, digital infrastructure connects thousands of independent actors, semiconductor ecosystems depend upon cooperation between governments, universities and industry, while artificial intelligence increasingly combines public regulation with private innovation. In each of these cases, complexity is not reduced. It is organised.

Switzerland therefore illustrates something much larger than Olympic hosting. It demonstrates how governance itself is becoming a form of infrastructure. The most valuable national asset is no longer simply a bridge, a railway or a stadium. It is the institutional architecture that enables those assets to function together as an integrated whole.

The future competitive advantage of nations may depend less on the infrastructure they build than on their capacity to coordinate the infrastructure they already possess.

This observation also changes the meaning of resilience. Increasingly, resilience depends not only upon redundancy within physical systems, but upon the quality of relationships between institutions. Communication, trust, shared situational awareness and organisational learning become just as important as engineering itself.

Switzerland 2038 distributes responsibility. It does not necessarily distribute dependency.

Some transport corridors remain indispensable, certain institutions retain unique responsibilities and specific regions inevitably become operationally critical. True resilience therefore emerges not from decentralisation alone, but from recognising where those dependencies remain—and designing the wider system accordingly.

Strategic Risks

Every organisational model creates opportunities. Every organisational model also creates vulnerabilities. The distributed architecture proposed by Switzerland is no exception. Indeed, many of its greatest strengths also represent its most significant strategic challenges.

Coordination Fatigue

Large networks require continuous alignment. As the number of participating organisations increases, so too does the effort needed to sustain cooperation over time. What appears manageable during the planning phase may become considerably more demanding as political priorities evolve, leadership changes and economic conditions shift.

Coordination is therefore not a one-time achievement but a capability that must be maintained throughout the entire lifecycle of the project. In a distributed model, organisational discipline becomes just as important as operational efficiency.

Hidden Critical Nodes

Distributed systems often appear inherently resilient because responsibility is shared across multiple actors. Yet distribution does not automatically eliminate dependency.

Some railway corridors, competition venues, emergency coordination centres or digital communication platforms inevitably become more important than others. If one of these critical nodes experiences disruption, the consequences may extend far beyond its immediate location.

The challenge is therefore not simply to distribute responsibility, but to understand where strategic dependencies continue to exist.

Democratic Time versus Operational Time

Swiss democracy is deliberately consultative, while international sporting events operate according to immovable deadlines. These two rhythms do not always align.

Public participation strengthens legitimacy and remains one of Switzerland’s defining institutional strengths. At the same time, extensive consultation can lengthen decision-making processes precisely when operational certainty becomes increasingly important.

The proposal therefore depends upon carefully balancing democratic legitimacy with organisational agility. Neither should come at the expense of the other.

Hidden Public Exposure

The financial architecture of Switzerland 2038 seeks to limit public exposure through private participation and the extensive use of existing infrastructure. This approach is both rational and fiscally responsible.

Nevertheless, limiting financial liability does not eliminate public responsibility. If transport systems fail, electricity networks are disrupted or security challenges emerge, governments remain responsible for maintaining continuity and protecting essential services.

Private guarantees may protect an event budget. They do not necessarily protect the public balance sheet from systemic disruption. Financial responsibility may be distributed. Political responsibility ultimately remains public.

Strategic Opportunities

The same organisational architecture that creates new risks also creates opportunities extending far beyond the Olympic Games themselves.

Demonstrating Institutional Competence

Increasingly, nations compete not only through economic performance or technological innovation, but through the quality of their institutions. Infrastructure alone is no longer sufficient. Governments must also demonstrate that complex organisations are capable of working together under pressure.

Successfully delivering a distributed Olympic Games would therefore showcase a form of institutional competence that is becoming strategically valuable in many other policy domains.

A New Model of Sustainability

For many years, sustainability has largely been understood in environmental terms. Switzerland broadens that discussion by suggesting that sustainability may also concern the way societies organise themselves.

Rather than continually expanding physical infrastructure, the proposal seeks to maximise the value of assets that already exist. Building less, reusing more and coordinating better become complementary elements of a broader philosophy of development.

Sustainability, in this sense, is not only about reducing environmental impact. It is also about increasing institutional efficiency.

Strengthening National Cohesion

Because responsibility is distributed across multiple regions, the project encourages participation far beyond a single host city. Ownership becomes national rather than metropolitan, allowing communities throughout the country to contribute directly to the success of the Games.

This wider participation may ultimately strengthen public legitimacy and reinforce national cohesion long after the Olympic flame has been extinguished.

Exporting Organisational Knowledge

Perhaps the most valuable product Switzerland could generate is not an Olympic model, but organisational expertise.

The experience gained from coordinating governments, transport systems, emergency services and private organisations under conditions of exceptional complexity may prove valuable well beyond sport. Increasingly, this kind of institutional knowledge represents a strategic asset that other countries may also seek to develop.

Lessons for Europe

The significance of Switzerland 2038 extends well beyond the Olympic movement. Across Europe, discussions about competitiveness increasingly revolve around industrial policy, energy independence, artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure and strategic autonomy. Although these debates often appear unrelated, they share a remarkably similar organisational challenge.

Each requires coordination across fragmented institutional landscapes in which governments, regional authorities, universities, private companies, regulators and financial institutions must work towards objectives that none could achieve independently.

The challenge is therefore rarely the absence of expertise or even investment. More often, it is the difficulty of aligning numerous capable actors around a shared long-term strategy.

In that respect, Switzerland offers an instructive example. Not because its constitutional model can simply be replicated elsewhere, but because it demonstrates an alternative philosophy of organisation. Rather than concentrating capability within a single institution, it seeks to coordinate capability across many institutions. Instead of replacing existing systems, it integrates them. And rather than assuming that larger organisations automatically produce greater resilience, it asks how independent organisations can function as one coherent system.

These principles increasingly resonate with Europe’s broader development. The continent’s future competitiveness may depend less upon creating entirely new structures than upon connecting the remarkable capabilities it already possesses.

From energy networks and semiconductor ecosystems to digital infrastructure and defence cooperation, Europe’s greatest strategic challenge increasingly resembles the one visible in Switzerland’s Olympic proposal.

How do autonomous institutions become a coherent system? That is not merely an Olympic question. It is becoming a European one.

Strategic Questions

Switzerland 2038 ultimately invites a series of broader questions that extend well beyond Olympic hosting.

• Can coordination become a competitive advantage equal to technological innovation?
• How should governments measure resilience when organisational capability becomes as important as physical infrastructure?
• What constitutes meaningful legacy if institutional learning proves more valuable than new construction?
• How can decentralised democracies preserve local autonomy while responding effectively to projects of international scale?
• Are existing public institutions prepared to govern increasingly interconnected systems whose complexity continues to expand?

These questions extend far beyond sport. They increasingly define the architecture of modern governance itself.

Strategic Reflection

Switzerland’s proposal should not primarily be understood as an Olympic bid. It should be understood as an institutional experiment.

The venues will undoubtedly attract international attention, while the competitions themselves may produce memorable sporting moments. Yet the most significant performance could take place far from the slopes and stadiums. It will unfold inside ministries, railway control centres, emergency coordination rooms, cantonal administrations, municipal governments and the countless organisations responsible for transforming an ambitious vision into operational reality.

Thousands of individual decisions, taken independently yet aligned towards a common purpose, ultimately form the true architecture of hosting complexity. Increasingly, they also reflect the architecture of modern society itself.

The question facing advanced democracies is therefore changing. It is no longer simply whether they can build larger systems, but whether they can coordinate increasingly complex systems without weakening democratic legitimacy, regional autonomy or public trust.

Switzerland 2038 suggests that this is possible. Not because complexity disappears. But because institutions learn how to organise it.

Strategic Insight

For much of Olympic history, success has been associated with architecture. Iconic stadiums, new transport systems and ambitious urban redevelopment projects came to symbolise the legacy of the Games.

Switzerland 2038 proposes a different measure of success. Rather than asking how much new infrastructure a nation can build, it asks how effectively existing infrastructure, institutions, capital and society can be connected into a coherent whole. In doing so, the proposal shifts the discussion from construction to coordination, and from physical expansion to institutional capability. That insight reaches far beyond sport.

As Europe confronts the challenges of electrification, artificial intelligence, industrial transformation and geopolitical uncertainty, the ability to coordinate complexity may become one of its most valuable strategic assets.

The future may belong not to the nations that build the most, but to those that coordinate complexity most effectively.

Next in the series: Executive Dialogue — Natalia Reiter: “Hosting Complexity in Practice”

Series

Part of Hosting Complexity — an Altair Media series exploring how nations organise identity, infrastructure and collective ambition through large-scale societal projects, global events and institutional design.

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Credit
Illustration by ChatGPT for Altair Media.

Caption
Rather than building a new Olympic city, Switzerland 2038 proposes coordinating an existing nation. This illustration reflects the central theme of the Strategic Briefing: that the future of hosting may depend less on construction than on governance, infrastructure and institutional coordination.