Ten days after Zermatt, it is Saas-Fee’s turn: Saastal Bergbahnen are suspending summer skiing on the Fee glacier. Sunday 9 August 2026 is the last operating day; from Monday 10 August the terrain stands still, until further notice.
For the first time in modern skiing history, Switzerland has not a single place left where you can ski in high summer.
The reason given
The lift company describes the conditions itself: despite extensive preparation work, current conditions no longer allow the pistes and glacier infrastructure to meet the required quality and safety standards. It says it will keep monitoring the situation and will announce when temperatures and glacier conditions permit operations to resume.
That is almost word for word the reasoning Zermatt gave on 31 July. And as there, the focus is not on air temperature but on whether a load-bearing layer of snow is sitting on the ice.
The warning signs were there, more clearly than we had them
In fairness, this belongs in the picture: Saas-Fee had not been running normally for weeks. Of four installations in the summer terrain, only two were still operating. On 1 August the area was already closed for a full day because of a lack of snow and open crevasses.
Our comparison of the three areas from 4 August lists Saas-Fee as “operating”. That was correct, but too clean: operations had already been halved by then. We have added a note to the piece accordingly.
The bottleneck that made it worse
A side aspect that explains the force of this news. After the shutdown in Zermatt, the race teams moved to Saas-Fee. At times up to 600 athletes were training on the shrunken terrain.
Walter Reusser, co-CEO of Swiss-Ski, had described the situation soberly even before today’s decision:
“We can’t simply transfer the teams planned for Zermatt there. There isn’t enough space available.”
Foreign teams were particularly affected, he said: many had specifically scheduled Zermatt ahead of their South American camps and now risked finding no slots at Saas-Fee. From Monday that question is settled: there are no slots left in Switzerland at all.
What is left in the Alps
| Resort | Country | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Stelvio Pass / Passo dello Stelvio | IT | operating, season until 1 November |
| Saas-Fee | CH | last day 9 August, suspended thereafter |
| Zermatt | CH | suspended since 31 July |
| Hintertux glacier | AT | closed since 26 July |
One. From Monday, a single area carries summer skiing in the entire Alps, and it is by far the lowest of the four: the Stelvio Pass, whose glacier pistes end at 3,450 metres – 449 metres below Zermatt’s highest point.
How that inversion comes about, and why altitude is the wrong metric for it, is set out in our comparison of the altitude bands. In short: the Stelvio Pass does not operate in winter at all, its snow lies undisturbed for half a year, and the area is small enough to concentrate on the strip that still holds.
This was foreseeable, and arithmetically so
On 4 August we analysed the model data for the coming fortnight. The result then: the freezing level does not fall below 3,950 metres once in the entire run, and the model shows fresh snow on not one day.
Saas-Fee’s summer terrain reaches about 3,600 metres. It was therefore above the freezing level the whole time, day and night. That is not a forecasting feat but a simple inference: where it never freezes, the piste does not refreeze either. Today’s decision is the operational consequence.
Nothing in that situation changes over the coming days. A resumption before the second half of August would be a surprise.
Context
In 2022 Zermatt paused for about 50 days and the Stelvio Pass stood still for two months. That was considered an exceptional year at the time. In 2026, three of four Alpine areas have gone out within two weeks, including both Swiss ones.
The chronicle of discontinued summer ski areas shows what the pattern looks like: first individual pauses, then shorter seasons, eventually the final closure. Saas-Fee and Zermatt are at step two. The Hintertux glacier, which gave up year-round operation in July, is further along.
Whether and when Saas-Fee reopens this season is down to the weather. The glacier season is announced through to April, and winter operations are unaffected by this decision.
We will update this piece as soon as the lift company resumes operations.
As of 6 August 2026.
Sources: SKINEWS.CH and Ski Racing on the suspension and the dates; 20 Minuten on installation numbers, the training bottleneck and the Walter Reusser quote; statement by Zermatt Bergbahnen of 31 July 2026; our own analysis of Open-Meteo model data from 4 August 2026.
