This weekend Val Thorens celebrates “Le Grand Dernier”, the resort’s last lift-served days of the 2025/26 Alpine season. It has been quite a season, with some memorable and some sobering highlights.
The 60th FIS Alpine World Cup season was defined by legendary comebacks and historic firsts: Mikaela Shiffrin secured her sixth Overall World Cup title, equalling the legendary Annemarie Moser-Pröll; Lindsey Vonn claimed her 83rd career victory in the St. Moritz downhill at age 41; and Lucas Pinheiro Braathen, now representing Brazil, made history in Levi as the first skier to win an Alpine World Cup race for a South American nation.
The Winter Olympics returned to the heart of the Italian Alps, and the home athletes certainly delivered. Federica Brignone won an emotional gold in the Super-G on home snow, completing a fairytale recovery from major leg fractures just a year prior. Meanwhile Switzerland’s Franjo von Allmen became the breakout star of the Games, securing a golden treble in the speed events.
Whilst competitive winter sports were spectacular, the season was marred by a tragic surge in avalanche fatalities across Europe, largely triggered by a persistent weak layer of sugar snow formed early in December, which became buried under nearly 2.5 metres of heavy January snowfall. This created a ticking time bomb snowpack that caught even experienced off-piste skiers off guard.
The most notable trends in ski tourism include the increased interest in Norway, aided by a weaker Krone, the increasing attraction of relatively crowd-free Furano and Tomamu in Hokkaido and the increase in bookings for snow-sure resorts like Val Thorens and Obergurgl. Many lower resorts are surely going to suffer in future seasons unless they can broaden their winter appeal.
Conversely more snow-sure resorts continue to invest in infrastructure, with Les Deux Alpes, Courchevel and Ischgl all making significant investment in new lifts.
The 2024-25 season saw a record 399 million global skier visits, a 7.8% increase from the previous year. While this growth was widespread, the report highlights that the Alpine countries—Austria, France, Italy, Liechtenstein, Slovenia, and Switzerland—collectively account for 14% of the world’s estimated 150 million skiers. This places the Alpine region, including Switzerland, as a key pillar of the global ski market, alongside Western Europe (20%), the Americas (20%), and Asia-Pacific (33%). Notably, the 2024-25 season saw strong demand despite below-average snow in parts of Europe, with snowmaking and operations helping to maintain visitation levels. While countries like the U.S., Italy, and Russia exceeded pre-Covid averages, the report notes that Japan and Germany have not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels. China once again leads the ranking of countries performing above their historic pre-Covid five-year average.
The leading ski nations are:
1 United States — 61.6 million (+1.8%)
2 France — 54.8 million (+5.6%)
3 Austria — 51.9 million (+3.6%)
4 Italy — 34.8 million (+8.8%)
5 Japan — 28.2 million (+15.6%)
6 Switzerland — 26.3 million (+13.7%)
7 China — 26.1 million (+13.0%)
8 Canada — 19.8 million (+13.1%)
9 Sweden — 10.2 million (-2.9%)
The findings were released at the Mountain Planet trade show in Grenoble, France in the The International Report on Snow & Mountain Tourism 2024/5.
The Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics has been a bit of a rollercoaster. On one hand, you’ve got the sheer thrill of Britain’s first-ever gold on snow, with Charlotte Bankes and Huw Nightingale making history in the snowboard cross . On the other, you can’t ignore the backdrop against which all the many wonderful sporting achievements unfolded.
However in terms of sustainability and the legacy of these Games, it feels like a real mixed bag.
The Wins: A Responsible Approach
Credit where it’s due, the organisers have genuinely tried to put their money where their mouth is, especially compared to the excessive construction we saw at some previous Games.
Using What’s Already There: The headline stat is that 85% of the competition venues were either existing or temporary . This is a massive win. Seeing iconic, historic venues like the Cortina Curling Stadium—first built for the 1956 Games—renovated rather than rebuilt from scratch is exactly what you want to see . It respects the heritage and avoids the “white elephant” problem.
Powering Up Cleanly: Almost all the venues are running on certified renewable electricity. Even the temporary generators, which are unavoidable, are running on renewable biofuel (HVO) rather than standard diesel . It’s a practical, sensible solution.
A Circular Economy: It was brilliant to hear they reused around 24,000 items of furniture and equipment from the Paris 2024 Summer Games . That kind of forward-thinking logistics is exactly the legacy we want to build between host cities.
A Legacy for Italians, Not Just Olympians: The legacy isn’t just about the two weeks of sport. The athletes’ village is designed to become student accommodation, and the Games are projected to create over 36,000 new jobs and a net economic benefit of over €5 billion for Italy . Over 2 million school kids got involved in educational programmes too . That’s a tangible, social legacy.
The Cracks in the Snow: The Sponsorship Contradiction
Although I enjoyed very much the absence of adverts and excessive advertising, this doesn’t mean that the Games didn’t escape the shadow of corporate sponsorship.
The ‘Torching the Future’ Paradox: The event is proudly sponsored by an oil and gas giant (Eni), a major car manufacturer (Stellantis), and an airline (ITA Airways) . It feels deeply hypocritical to watch athletes compete on fragile, climate-threatened snow while the boards around the track are advertising the very products driving the problem.
The Hidden Carbon Footprint: This isn’t just pearl-clutching. Reports from the New Weather Institute and Scientists for Global Responsibility estimate that the emissions induced by these sponsorship deals—through the companies’ own operations and advertising—could be 1.3 million tonnes of CO2. That’s actually 40% more than the entire carbon footprint of running the Games themselves . You can’t help but think of the irony when Italy has reportedly lost 265 ski resorts due to a lack of natural snow . It’s like selling tickets for a sinking ship while advertising the drill that made the hole.
The British Perspective: Fighting Above Our Weight
British athletes are at a disadvantage in that the country does not have reliable conditions for snow sports. Our entire winter sports programme operates on a fraction of the budget of the top nations .
This makes our success at these “sustainable” Games feel particularly poignant. We are, by necessity, the ultimate experts in working with what we’ve got, not building shiny new infrastructure. When Matt Weston and the skeleton squad bounce back from disappointment to win, or when Mia Brookes pushes the limits of freestyle, they embody a scrappy, efficient, and very British spirit of innovation .
A Bleak but Hopeful Future
Looking ahead to the 2030 Games in the French Alps, it’s clear that 2026 has started a vital conversation. There is growing public support (77% of Italians agree) to ban high-emission companies from sponsoring winter sports . The athletes themselves are speaking out, drafting open letters saying, “Oil companies don’t belong in the Olympics” . Although the Italians reversed the lack of sustainability of previous Olympics, it could have gone further.
So, as I reflect on the 2026 Games, I feel proud of Team GB’s resilience, in awe of many of the amazing Olympians from so many nations and cautiously optimistic about the operational side of hosting. I am pleased the boycott of Russia was maintained, although sadly rescinded for the Paralympics. But the lingering memory will be that uncomfortable contradiction: celebrating human endurance while platforming the forces that endanger the very snow we compete on.
When Beijing secured the bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, encouraged the populace to embrace winter sports enthusiastically. This led to the construction of new resorts. The government claims that around 300 million Chinese citizens (from a population of 1.4 billion) have participated in winter sports since 2015. Although this figure may be exaggerated, the campaign appears to resonate more with middle-class Chinese than other more ideologically driven initiatives.
“If sports are strong, a nation is strong,” Xi Jinping has stated. China secured just one gold medal at the 2018 Winter Olympics, but this number rose to nine in 2022. Part of this success was due to the naturalization of foreign athletes, such as Eileen Gu, an American-born freestyle skier who chose to compete for China and became a prominent figure during the Beijing games. She won two gold medals at the Olympics and another victory at the Freestyle Skiing World Cup in December, held in China.
However, the government’s push for winter sports extends beyond medal acquisition. China’s latest five-year plan includes targets for increased participation in sports and physical exercise, aiming primarily to enhance public fitness. In 2020, the National Health Commission reported that about half of China’s population is overweight. Additionally, the state hopes to encourage Chinese holidaymakers to spend their money on domestic activities, like skiing.
Most Chinese skiers are beginners, so there are few complaints about the country’s ski destinations, which typically feature small slopes with gentle inclines. The largest Chinese resorts are comparable to small European ones. At Mission Hills, more space is dedicated to photo opportunities and arcade games than to skiing. However, those who conquer its simple run can anticipate the opening of the world’s largest indoor ski center in Shenzhen in 2025.
For now, Chinese skiers seeking more challenging terrain might look to Xinjiang in the northwest, with its high mountains and lengthy winters. Xinjiang boasts 64 ski resorts, nearly 10% of China’s total. According to Xinhua, the state news agency, visitors to the skiing haven of Altay increased six-fold over the five years leading up to 2022. While this tourism surge boosts the local economy, it also diverts attention from the human rights abuses that the government has perpetrated in Xinjiang over the past decade.
