The glacier season has started. The Stelvio has been running since 4 September, Val Senales since the 19th, and five Tyrolean areas follow by early October.
One is missing from that list: Zermatt. Over the sixteen days from 14 September the Theodul glacier faced thirteen frosty nights and 3.2 centimetres of fresh snow, more snow than any other area in this overview. Nothing has been announced to this day.
Update, 2 October 2026: who is running and who is wobbling. A lot has moved since the last update. This is the position today, in each case according to the lift company’s own page:
Resort Status on 2 October Val Senales training operation, free skiing on request Pitztal open since 26 September Hintertux open since 2 October Saas-Fee open again from 3 October, at first only Allalin 2 and 3 Stubai 9 October, “dependent on snow and weather conditions” Sölden no day named, World Cup on 24/25 October Kaunertal cancelled, still no new date Zermatt summer skiing shut since 31 July, winter season from 1 November Whether the October dates will hold, we checked with 51 weather runs: When will the ski resorts really open? The table further down is the position as of 22 September.
5 October: Sölden has named a day. The glacier ski area opens on Friday, 9 October, with the Schwarze Schneid I and II gondolas and the Karleskogl drag lift.
Update, 22 September 2026: Kaunertal calls off its start. Four days before the date we had cross-checked with the operator two days earlier, kaunertaler-gletscher.at says that because of persistently warm temperatures and a forecast with continued temperatures above freezing, the ski operation planned for 26 September 2026 cannot go ahead, and that a new date will be announced as soon as snow and temperature conditions allow.
That leaves Pitztal alone this weekend, its date still on its own site. The headline of this piece said seven areas had a date; six do.
What is striking is what it was not. Kaunertal had eleven frosty nights over the sixteen days from 14 September, as many as Stubai and two more than Val Senales, which has been running since the 19th, on top of 25 snow depots kept from last winter. It still was not enough. That is exactly the point the key statement further down makes: an area does not open when a measurement is reached.
Correction and update, 20 September 2026: We cross-checked all five Tyrolean dates with the lift companies, as this article said we would. Three of the five were wrong, and all three were wrong here too.
Sölden does not start on 26 September. We carried that date as brought forward, noting that confirmation was pending. It never came, and checking back shows why: the two reports naming a 26 September start are from 2022 and 2025. For 2026 the Tyrolean tourist board gives 2 October as the season start for the Tiefenbach gondola, and the overview on schneehoehen.de, in its 17 September state, gives 4 October. Six days before the date we published, that is the difference between a trip and a wasted one.
Stubai does not start on 2 October but on the 9th. Its own site says: “The start of the ski season at the Stubai Glacier is scheduled for October 9, 2026.” A week’s difference.
Hintertux gives no 4 October. The lift company’s own site says “probably late September”; 2 to 4 October is the first park opening. We had read the end of that weekend as the season start.
The two dates on 26 September held up. Kaunertal says so through its operations manager Hansjörg File, who has them starting “even a week earlier than last year” on snow from 25 depots kept since last winter. Pitztal gives the date on its own site. Val Senales held too, running since 19 September. For Zermatt, nothing has changed.
All three wrong dates come from the same overview that other portals copy, and we copied it like everyone else. That is not a complaint about the overview; it is the reason our table carries a column saying where a date comes from. While that column says “not cross-checked”, the date is a lead and not a commitment.
The dates, and where they come from
| Area | Date | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Stelvio | open since 4 September | confirmed, operator statement |
| Val Senales | open since 19 September | confirmed, operating |
| Kaunertal | called off, new date open | operator statement of 22 September |
| Pitztal | Saturday 26 September | confirmed, operator statement |
| Hintertux | late September | operator statement, no fixed date |
| Sölden | 2 to 4 October | corrected, see the update above |
| Stubai | Friday 9 October | corrected, operator statement |
| Zermatt | none | no announcement |
| Saas-Fee | Sunday 1 November | winter operation, no autumn skiing |
The right-hand column is the actual content of this table. Two areas are already running, a third has called off its start, and every remaining date rests on a statement from the lift company itself. Three of them had to be corrected to get there. A second-hand date is a good lead, not a commitment, and that difference belongs in the table rather than in a footnote. What happens when you overlook it is in the update above.
Two rows need a word of explanation. Hintertux gives no date but “probably late September”. We write it that way rather than commit to a day the lift company itself will not name. Sölden carries a range because two usable sources give two days: 2 October for the Tiefenbach gondola, 4 October for skiing.
For Val Senales it is worth asking what “open” means. On opening day a single piste was running, roughly thirty metres wide, prepared hard and meant for racers; the Swedish team was among those training on it. The 42 kilometres of piste the area advertises arrive with the natural snow. Open and skiable are two different things, and in the week after an opening the gap is wide.
What the weather says about it
Two rows of this chart are worth a second look.
Zermatt sits in second place and still is not opening. Thirteen frosty nights, 3.2 centimetres of fresh snow, the highest figure of the group, and on 24 September the first day in months that does not rise above freezing even in the afternoon. That is exactly the condition we identified at the end of August as the decisive one, because it was what tipped it in 2022. It is now in the outlook for the first time.
Sölden sits at the other end and opens last. Eight frosty nights, 0.2 centimetres of fresh snow, and at 3,050 metres the lowest terrain in the overview. The first version of this article had Sölden opening earliest of the Austrians, which already sat badly with those figures. That it runs at all in early October is down to snowfarming: the snow for the season opening has been waiting under fleece since spring, it does not have to fall in autumn.
Why Zermatt is not the outlier it looks like
It is tempting to read something into the silence. We will not, and the reason is in the Zermatt Bergbahnen statement from the summer. Alongside the weather it carries a second sentence that most reports leave out: the challenges of technically maintaining the transport installations are steadily increasing.
Frost does not repair a lift. What helped in 2022, besides the cold, was that maintenance work continued during the closure and the installations were ready when the weather came. Whether that is the case this time we do not know, and we are not pretending otherwise.
For Saas-Fee the question does not arise. There the summer operation was not suspended but ended, on the grounds that pistes and glacier infrastructure no longer meet the standards. The next date is winter operation on 1 November.
What we are working on
This table is an interim state, not a finished article. What was open on 14 September is partly settled, and settling it turned up an error:
- Cross-checked, all five of them. Pitztal confirms 26 September itself and is sticking to it. Kaunertal called its own date off on 22 September. Sölden, Stubai and Hintertux gave dates other than the ones we had. Both are in the updates at the top.
- Zermatt. As soon as there is an announcement it will appear here and on the resort page. Anyone searching online for a reopening will first find a report dated 19 September 2022. That was a different autumn.
If you need certainty before then, check the operator’s own site. Every date is subject to sufficient snow and cold anyway, including the confirmed ones.
Read on: When can the glaciers reopen? · The Stelvio reopens · Snowfarming: how a pile of snow survives the summer · How will the winter of 2026/27 turn out?
Sources and method
- Val Senales: written reply from Vinschgau Marketing of 1 September 2026 to our enquiry, borne out by operations actually starting on 19 September 2026 (report by Südtirol News the same day, citing Alpin Arena Schnals).
- Stelvio: statement by S.I.F.A.S. on passostelvio.eu, operations resumed on 4 September 2026, daily 06:30 to 12:00.
- Pitztal: stated on pitztaler-gletscher.at, “ab SA 26 SEP”, retrieved on 20 September 2026.
- Kaunertal: the start on 26 September 2026 is called off. kaunertaler-gletscher.at states that persistently warm temperatures and a forecast with continued temperatures above freezing mean the ski operation planned for 26 September 2026 cannot go ahead, and that a new date will be announced as soon as snow and temperature conditions allow. Retrieved 22 September 2026. The Kaunertaler Gletscherbahnen had previously given 26 September, with a season end of 17 May 2027 and 25 snow depots kept from last winter as the basis.
- Stubai: “The start of the ski season at the Stubai Glacier is scheduled for October 9, 2026”, stubaier-gletscher.com, retrieved 20 September 2026. The schneehoehen.de overview gave 2 October, and we had taken that figure.
- Sölden: the Tyrolean tourist board gives 2 October 2026 as the season start for the Tiefenbach gondola, the same schneehoehen.de overview gives 4 October. The reports naming a 26 September start are dated 20 September 2022 and 20 September 2025 and concern earlier seasons. On 14 September 2026 we carried 26 September as brought forward; that was wrong.
- Hintertux: stated on hintertuxergletscher.at, “probably late September”, retrieved on 20 September 2026. The first park opening is announced for 2 to 4 October.
- Zermatt and Saas-Fee: statements by Zermatt Bergbahnen and Saastal Bergbahnen from summer 2026; as of 20 September 2026 there is no new announcement.
- Weather data: Open-Meteo, which combines the models of MeteoSwiss and the German weather service, retrieved on 14 September 2026. For each area the altitude of the ski terrain was fixed, otherwise the model uses the altitude of its grid point. The first seven to eight days are reliable, after that it is a trend.
