The Invictus Games 2025: Why the World Needs Events Like This

Jelly Roll stood on stage at the closing ceremony and told the warriors in the room: "If you ever hear that voice in your head saying you can be anything but great, it's a liar." He paused while the words landed. The audience — 534 competing veterans, their families, and thousands of supporters — absorbed them quietly, many of them people who have spent years fighting that exact voice.

That's the Invictus Games in a sentence. Sport as language for things that words usually can't reach.

Historic in Every Sense

The seventh edition of the Games — held across Vancouver and Whistler in British Columbia from February 8 to 16 — was the first to incorporate winter sports, making it a hybrid event unlike anything the Invictus program had attempted before. Alpine skiing, snowboarding, Nordic skiing, biathlon, skeleton, and wheelchair curling joined the established sports of indoor rowing, swimming, wheelchair basketball, wheelchair rugby, and sitting volleyball.

The opening ceremony set a record — 40,000 spectators attended, the highest ever for an Invictus Games opening. Chris Martin of Coldplay performed the first-ever rendition of the Invictus Anthem. The scale of the event reflected how far the Games have grown since their founding in London in 2014.

The Athletes Who Made It Matter

Kyle Burgess, a former British Army soldier, found purpose and healing through adaptive sports after struggling with his identity post-service. He turned to snowboarding as part of his recovery — a passion that led him to compete in multiple events at Vancouver Whistler 2025, including alpine snowboarding, skeleton, and wheelchair basketball.

Captain Olivia Miley-Dyer of Team Australia entered the Games with genuine uncertainty. She had been undergoing treatment for cancer and initially doubted whether she could compete at a high level. She had never been to snow before being selected for the Games and discovered Nordic skiing through Invictus — an opportunity that helped her find new purpose.

Major Ashley Christman of Team USA competed while balancing ongoing treatment. At the Meet the Medalists event, she reflected: "Living like I'm thriving, living like I'm living and looking forward to what comes next." Her message — that resilience is not about being strong all the time, but about pushing forward despite obstacles — became one of the defining statements of the Games.

Why These Games Reach People

Sport produces a particular kind of story. The Invictus Games produce a particular kind of sport story. The difference is that the obstacles these athletes have overcome before they even arrive at competition are extraordinary — injuries, mental health crises, periods of profound uncertainty about identity after leaving military service.

Watching someone ski down a mountain at Whistler on a prosthetic limb, or compete in wheelchair basketball having been told they might never walk again, puts every other sporting contest in a different frame. That's not to diminish other sport — it's to say that what these athletes have already accomplished before the competition starts redefines what the word "competitor" means.

The final report confirmed that the Games reached a total audience of 2.24 billion across all channels, with 571 hours of international TV coverage. $81.1 million in overall economic impact was generated for British Columbia.

What Comes Next

Prince Harry, who founded the Games in 2014 following his experience of witnessing the power of adaptive sport during visits to Warrior Games in the US, confirmed at the closing ceremony that the next edition will be held in Birmingham, United Kingdom in 2027.

The Games keep growing. More nations. More athletes. More winter sports that nobody thought could work in this format until Vancouver and Whistler proved otherwise. The Birmingham Games will return the Invictus program to the country where it started — and will do so with an audience, a track record, and a community of veterans that is significantly larger than anything that existed in September 2014.

There are very few events in sport that produce this ratio of meaningful stories to airtime. The Invictus Games is one of them.

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Invictus Games Vancouver Whistler 2025, February 8-16. Information sourced from official Invictus Games Foundation reports and confirmed athlete accounts.