According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, around 60 percent of nations have ever participated in the Winter Olympic Games. Their article lists 120 countries and territories that have been part of the competition since its inception in 1924. Other than the Summer Olympic Games, the Winter Games are seeing less participation across the board due to the limited nature of sports included and these being tied to a specific climatic zone.
However, nations from warmer climates have participated in the event since decades ago. The first Jamaican bobsleigh team of 1988 might have risen to prominence due to a fictionalized Hollywood movie, but before them, there was the Mexican five-man bobsleigh that came in 11th out of 23 in 1928, beating Swiss, French, German and not one but two Austrian teams, one of whom lost a rider and was disqualified.
Other examples are Turkey and Lebanon, which took part in skiing competitions for the first time in 1936 and 1948, respectively, as well as a first Southeast Asian country, the Philippines, which made its debut in 1972, also in skiing. However, countries that aren't explicit winter sports meccas have also seen patchy participation over the years. Mexico, for example, didn't return to the Winter Games until 1984 (but has been in regular attendance since 2010).
African nations have seen the least participation, even though recent Winter Games first-timers have included Zimbabwe in 2014, Togo in 2014 and 2018, Nigeria and Eritrea since 2018 and Guinea-Bissau this year. Out of 18 current nation states that have only taken part in Winter Olympics once or twice, seven are African, showing again that some nations' participation can be intermittent and hinging on individual athletes, often with ties to or training grounds in other latitudes.
Just 16 countries participated in the inaugural 1924 Winter Games in Chamonix, France, while sportspeople from three more – India, Nepal and the United Kingdom – received gold medals in alpinism for the 1922 British Mount Everest expedition. Two nations participating in 1924, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, have since split up into several nations states, which are still listed as original participants for the purpose of this chart. Many of them are avid contenders and like Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Czech Republic, have not missed a Winter Olympics since their independence. Another major Winter Olympics nations, Germany, was still banned due to its role in World War I in 1924.
The USSR participated for the first time in 1956 and after 1994, Russia and former Soviet Republics have been frequent participants in the Games, with the exception of Turkmenistan, which never contributed as an independent nation. Russia has been banned as a country from all Olympic Games since 2016 and Belarus has been excluded since 2024. The participation of Baltic states actually precedes USSR participation as Latvia was among the original participants of 1924 and Estonia and Lithuania joined in 1928 before they became Soviet states.
The story of Taiwan and China is similar, with the latter making its Winter Olympics debut in 1980 after the Cultural Revolution ended, while Taiwan had already participated from 1972. The largest nations still awaiting their first Winter Olympics participations are Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
