CONI

CONI (Comitato Olimpico Nazionale Italiano) was founded in 1914 and serves as Italy's representative body to the International Olympic Committee, overseeing 50 national sports federations and coordinating Italian participation in the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Its current president, Giovanni Malagò, emerged as a frontrunner to replace Gabriele Gravina as FIGC president following Gravina's resignation in April 2026. An extraordinary FIGC assembly of 274 delegates was scheduled for 22 June to elect a new president.

CONI's role has been contested in recent years. Italy's Parliament passed legislation creating a separate government body, Sport e Salute, to distribute funds to national governing bodies, reducing CONI's financial power. A 2021 decree partially reversed this, restoring CONI's governance authority over federations and Olympic representation while limiting Sport e Salute to funding execution. The organisation operates across 107 provinces and 19 regions and remains Italy's primary institutional voice on sport policy.

Malagò's potential move from CONI to the FIGC presidency would represent a crossing of institutional lines between Olympic governance and football administration — unusual but not unprecedented in Italian sport. His candidacy reflects both the depth of the FIGC's crisis and the absence of credible internal candidates following the simultaneous resignations of Gravina and Buffon. The outcome of the June assembly will shape who appoints the next Italy head coach and what reform programme the federation pursues ahead of Euro 2032.