TL;DR
Niseko Village is replacing a lift from the early 1980s with an eight-person gondola, Tsugaike gets a six-person chairlift, Madarao joins the Ikon Pass and Togari opens Asia’s first private ski resort. Here’s what is actually new in Japan skiing for 2026/27, plus what is still a year or two away.
The biggest lift news in Japan this winter is a gondola at Niseko Village, and the oddest is a ski resort with a membership list.
Japan’s 2026/27 season has a few genuine changes rather than the usual round of new restaurant menus. Most of the lift work is in Niseko and Hakuba, there is one pass addition worth knowing about, and one resort is trying something Asia hasn’t seen before.
Niseko Village swaps a 1980s chairlift for a gondola
The Mori-no Chair, a two-person fixed-grip lift that has been running since the early 1980s, is being replaced by the eight-person Shin Mori-no Gondola. It is being built in two stages. Stage one opens in December 2026 and runs from the base to a mid-mountain station at 670 metres. Stage two follows in December 2027, taking the gondola up to around 930 metres.
The system will have 86 cabins, including VIP cabins, and roughly doubles the capacity of the lift it replaces. The resort says five ageing lifts are being consolidated into two gondola lines and one new chairlift, which should also reduce the construction footprint on the mountain. The Wonderland Chair is moving from a single to a two-person lift as part of the same program.
