Paralympic Prize Money: Equal in the US, Half in Italy

There is no Paralympic prize money. The International Paralympic Committee awards none — exactly as the IOC awards none.

Every payment comes from a national committee, and the answers they have reached could hardly be more different. More prize and payment breakdowns sit in our prize money hub.

Country	Paralympic gold	Olympic gold	Ratio
United States	$37,500	$37,500	Equal
Italy	~$118,000	~$213,000	~55%
Australia	$20,000	Higher	Less
United Kingdom	$0	$0	Equal at zero

Paying the most and paying equally are different things

This is the finding that reframes the whole subject.

Italy pays a Paralympic champion about $118,000 — more than three times the American rate. On any absolute measure it is the most generous figure here.

But it is roughly 55% of Italy’s own Olympic gold payment of about $213,000, set out in our guide to the Olympic medal bonus. An Italian Paralympic champion receives a little over half what an Italian Olympic champion receives for the same colour of medal.

The United States pays $37,500 — under a third of Italy’s figure — and pays it identically to Olympians and Paralympians.

So generosity and equality do not travel together. The country that pays Paralympians the most is not the country that pays them equally, and the country that pays them equally is not paying very much.

What the US actually changed

American Paralympians began earning the same as Olympians at the Tokyo Games in 2021, through the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee’s medal bonus programme.

Medal	US payment
Gold	$37,500
Silver	$22,500
Bronze	$15,000

Those rates continued at the 2026 Winter Games. It is a single joint committee paying a single schedule, which is what makes equality straightforward rather than aspirational — there is no separate Paralympic rate to argue about because there is no separate rate.

Italy’s numbers in full

Medal	Italy, Paralympic
Gold	~$118,000
Silver	~$65,000
Bronze	~$41,000

Set against Italy’s Olympic schedule of roughly $213,000 / $106,000 / $71,000 as host nation, the Paralympic rates run at approximately 55%, 61% and 58% respectively.

A Paralympic silver in Italy is worth more than a US Paralympic gold. Both statements about that are true at once: Italian Paralympians are among the best-paid in the world, and they are paid substantially less than their Olympic counterparts.

Britain pays nobody, on purpose

The United Kingdom awards no cash bonus for a medal — not to Olympians, not to Paralympians.

That is not an oversight. Support is delivered through UK Sport using National Lottery funding, directed at training, coaching and athlete development rather than at podium payments.

It produces perfect equality between Olympians and Paralympians, at zero, and it is a genuinely different philosophy: fund the pathway, not the result. Whether that serves athletes better than a bonus is a real argument, and the British medal record over the past two decades is the evidence usually cited for it.

It is also not unique to Olympic sport. The Six Nations pays its champions £0, and the Solheim Cup pays its players nothing at all — set out in our guides to Six Nations prize money and Solheim Cup prize money.

Australia has not equalised

Australian Paralympic medallists receive $20,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver and $10,000 for bronze — less than Australian Olympians receive for the same achievement.

We have not published the Australian Olympic figures here because we have not separately verified them, but the gap is the point: Australia is a country that pays medal bonuses and has chosen not to make the two schedules match.

Why national committees decide

Because neither the IOC nor the IPC pays anything, and both leave it entirely to member nations.

That is the same structure documented in our guide to the Olympic medal bonus, where the same gold medal was worth about $792,000 to a Singaporean athlete at the 2026 Winter Games and $37,500 to an American one — a gap of roughly 21 times.

Small nations pay most because a medal is rare and nationally significant. Large nations pay least per medal because they win many. Paralympic payments inherit that logic entirely, and add a second variable on top: whether a country treats the two Games as one programme or two.

The United States treats them as one. Most countries do not.

How we checked these numbers

The equalisation of US Paralympic and Olympic medal payments from the Tokyo 2021 Games is from the International Paralympic Committee’s own report. The $37,500 gold, $22,500 silver and $15,000 bronze rates and their continuation at the 2026 Winter Games are from the IPC, CNBC’s 2026 medal bonus breakdown and US Para Swimming’s Operation Gold page. The Italian Paralympic Committee’s approximately $118,000 gold, $65,000 silver and $41,000 bronze are from CNBC. Australia’s $20,000, $15,000 and $10,000 Paralympic bonuses, and the statement that they are lower than the Australian Olympic rates, are from the same reporting and The Ethics Centre’s comparison. The UK’s absence of medal bonuses and its UK Sport National Lottery funding model are from CNBC.

Italy’s ~$213,000 Olympic gold figure comes from our own Olympic medal bonus coverage, and the 55%, 61% and 58% ratios are our own arithmetic from the two schedules. Currency conversions are as published by the source and were made at different times.

We have not published Australian Olympic bonus figures because we could not verify them to the same standard, so the Australian comparison is stated directionally rather than as a ratio.

Review class: event-driven. Recheck after each Olympic and Paralympic Games, and on any national committee changing its schedule.