Europe Ski Resorts Open Now: What Is Skiable in Mid-October 2026

Europe’s ski season is officially under way, with the emphasis on officially.

A record-warm summer in the Alps left glaciers with little snow cover, and the freezing level sat stubbornly above 3,000 metres for weeks. Lift-served skiing disappeared from the Alps in mid-August for the first time in living memory. A handful of areas are back now, but openings have slipped and the terrain on offer is a fraction of what skiers would normally find in the second week of October. On 8 October, Snow-Forecast counted about 30 km of open runs across the five Alpine glaciers then operating, up from roughly 6 km a week earlier. Three more Austrian glaciers have started since.

Austria

Pitztal Glacier was the first Austrian glacier to start, opening on 26 September with around 6 km of runs. Hintertux Glacier reopened on 2 October after a nine-week closure, with about 15 km ready on day one. The area was once marketed as a 365-day operation and now shuts for several weeks each year.

Sölden opened on Friday 9 October, a week later than planned, with a single piste. The Schwarze Schneid I and II lifts and the Karleskogl drag lift are running, serving piste 32 at 6.3 km. The Rettenbach restaurant is open for lunch, and the glacier road runs from 7.30 am to 4.30 pm. The FIS World Cup opening giant slaloms follow on 24 and 25 October, ladies first.

Stubai Glacier also started on 9 October. The Gamsgarten I and II gondolas, the Rotadl eight-seater chairlift and a shortened Daunferner drag lift are operating, covering the Daunferner (7) and Daunenhang (8) pistes. Snow is thin, so there is no ski run all the way down to the Gamsgarten top station yet and skiers ride the Rotadl chairlift back. The Gamsgarten market restaurant is open, the first gondola leaves at 8 am, and drag lifts close at 3 pm.

Kitzsteinhorn planned its start for Saturday 10 October, with the descent down to the Gletscherjet 3/4 mid station the target and the snowpark not opening that weekend. Skinachrichten reported 2,500 tickets sold straight away once the season began.

Switzerland

Saas-Fee restarted glacier skiing on the weekend of 3 October after closing in early August, with around 10 km of runs open. The Allalin 2 and 3 T-bars are the lifts spinning, and the lower part of the glacier area was still closed at the start.

Zermatt reopens on Wednesday 14 October after a closure of more than two months, which began when public skiing was suspended on 31 July. The restart is small. Only the high-altitude Plateau Rosa 1 and 2 lifts and the Matterhorn Glacier Ride cable car between Klein Matterhorn and Testa Grigia are operating, which makes it a continuation of summer skiing rather than the start of the winter season.

Recent snowfall and lower temperatures have given the operations team enough cover to scrape together a few slopes. The full resort is scheduled to open on 1 November. National team athletes were able to keep using restricted training pistes throughout the closure.

Titlis in Engelberg has pushed its glacier opening back two weeks, from 10 October to 24 October. Only the glacier will open that day, with glacier skiing planned through to 2 May 2027. The Stand-Trübsee sector is scheduled for 5 December and the valley run for 19 December. The resort has not given an official reason, though temperatures in Switzerland stayed above average well into October.

Titlis’s Rotair cable car is also out of service until mid-December while the new mountain station is built, with the summit reached by the non-rotating Titlis Connect cable car.

Italy

Passo Stelvio and Schnalstal Glacier (Val Senales) are both open, but in a limited way. Stelvio has about 3 km of skiable terrain and Val Senales had around 1 km when it opened. Both run mornings only, and the slopes are largely taken up by race team training. Val Senales also closed briefly after opening before reopening.

Still waiting

Kaunertal Glacier planned a late-September start and was still waiting for its first ski day in early October because rain fell instead of snow. Diavolezza is scheduled to start on 17 October on snow-farmed terrain, Mölltal Glacier on 23 October and Schilthorn on 31 October.

What the weather is doing

The freezing level dipped to around 2,500 metres overnight in the week to 8 October, down from over 3,000 metres. A colder, more unsettled spell was forecast to arrive from 8 October, with regular light snowfall on the high glaciers.

Swiss glaciers are in poor shape over the longer term as well. GLAMOS, the national monitoring programme, measured a 5.5 percent loss of total ice volume in the 2025-26 year, the second-largest on record after 2022.