In the opening slalom of the season in Levi, 2023 discipline champion
Lucas Pinheiro Braathen, who then skied for his native Norway before transferring to his mother's homeland of Brazil in 2025 after a one-year retirement, recorded the first World Cup victory ever for his new country and its one-man team. At the same time, six-time discipline champion
Marcel Hirscher, who won all of those championships while skiing for Austria before transferring to the Netherlands after a six-year retirement, announced that his return to the World Cup circuit from his season-ending injury in December 2024 would not take place until January 2026. After a break while the World Cup series moved to North America, slalom resumed at Val d'Isère, France, where Norway's
Timon Haugan, who had failed to podium the day before in giant slalom after being in third following the first run, held off
Loïc Meillard of Switzerland, the previous day's winner, to become the third different winner in the discipline this season and take over the discipline lead. Finally, in the last World Cup race before Christmas, the aptly-named
Clément Noël of France held the slalom lead after the first run, but Norway's
Atle Lie McGrath passed him on the second run for the victory, thus denying Noël a holiday-themed win, with McGrath's Norwegian teammate Haugan (fourth) retaining the discipline lead. Returning from the New Year's break, the men began a series of five slaloms in five weeks with a night slalom in Madonna di Campiglio, Italy, which this time was won by Noël, who came from behind to edge Finland's
Eduard Hallberg and thus trail Haugen by only three points for the discipline lead. A week later in
Adelboden, Switzerland, France's Rassat claimed his second victory of the season in the slalom, edging out two Norwegians (McGrath and
Henrik Kristoffersen) for the win and claiming the lead in the discipline himself by 26 points over Noël, as Haugen failed to finish the first run. In the third race, at
Wengen, Switzerland, McGrath repeated his victory there from 2025, beating his good friend (with birthdays only two days apart) and former Norwegian teammate Braathen by almost half a second, which propelled him into a narrow discipline lead, now followed by Braathen, Noël, Rassat, and Haugan, with only 42 points separating the five of them. But the next week, in the slalom at Kitzbühel, Austria, the home country's
Manuel Feller came from fourth after the first run to overtake leader
Loïc Meillard and save Austrian honor for the weekend; meanwhile, when McGrath failed to finish his first run, Braathen, who finished fourth, took over the discipline lead. Three days later, about a week before the start of the Olympics, a night slalom under the lights at Schlamding turned into an all-Norwegian battle between McGrath and Kristoffersen, with last year's discipline champion Kristoffersen coming from behind on the second run to claim his first victory of the season, while McGrath grabbed a one-point lead over Braathen in the discipline race. The first run at the Winter Olympics started in a light snowfall, which quickly turned into a blizzard with low visibility, allowing McGrath, the first skier, to build a lead of 0.59 over Meillard, the second skier, who built another 0.35 over the next-best skier,
Fabio Gstrein of Austria, with only seven skiers within two seconds of McGrath's lead and 11 of the top 30 and 49 out of 96 total failing to finish the run; however, McGrath straddled a gate and skied out early in the (clear) second run, allowing Meillard to complete his set of Olympic medals at these games with a gold medal (to join his silver from the team combined and his bronze from the giant slalom). Gstrein, who matched Meillard for the best second-run time, won the silver for the first medal for the Austrian men's Alpine skiing team first individual medal of the games, and Kristoffersen, who posted the third-best second-run time, took the bronze for his second career Olympic medal. Back on the World Cup circuit at
Kranjska Gora (Slovenia), the situation was reversed: Meillard skied out on the first run, while McGrath barely managed to hold on to his first-run lead for a victory on the melting mountainside (with temperatures in the 50s), edging his teammate Kristoffersen by .01 seconds and his childhood friend Braathen by .04 seconds, thus giving McGrath a 41-point lead over Braathen heading into the finals. ==Finals==