Heavy snowfall across the Alps has delivered a spectacular start to the 2025/26 ski season, with resorts reporting impressive accumulations and rapidly expanding terrain.
Over the past few days, up to 70cm of fresh snow has fallen, blanketing slopes from France and Switzerland to Austria and Italy, with as much again in the forecast for the coming week for the potential of up to nearly 1.5m (five feet) on high slopes in the final week of November for some.
The snowfall has arrived with perfect timing for the start of the french ski season with Tignes and Val Thorens, opening this week. However resorts opening soon have published some of the biggest 72 hour total setting them up well for their imminent 25-26 starts. They include Courchevel and neighbouring La Tania (70cm), Crans Montana (60cm) and Alpe d’Huez (50cm) are among the resorts set to open soon with excellent cover. La Plagne, opening mid-December, is pictured in the past 24 hours.
In terms of early season terrain Austria’s Sölden leads the way with more than two-thirds of its runs open already meaning 98km of pistes already open, overtaking Zermatt/Cervinia’s 86km, while Ischgl – set to open later this week and likely to have more than 100km of runs open from day one – logged 20cm of new snow so far.
With freezing temperatures preserving the cover and further storms forecast, industry insiders are optimistic this could be one of the strongest Alpine starts in years.
