The 2024/25 ski season is already underway, but what awaits us in terms of world-class competition, key season dates and laughing and dancing at music and comedy festivals in the snow?
Season Dates
© Rise Festival
The good news is that Christmas and New Year days fall conveniently on Wednesdays this winter, so there’s none of the travel hassles that are likely to occur when they fall on changeover day at the weekend.
“January will be quieter and is low season in France for the five weeks running from 4 January so including the first week of February too. With excellent snow and very low prices, it’s a good time to go for those who are not tied to school holidays,” says Xavier Schouller, boss of French ski holiday specialists Peak Retreats who adds,
“For those wanting to ski in France, French and European holidays start on the 8th of February. French holidays last four weeks with three different regions having alternate two weeks. This means that the middle two weeks are always the busiest as they overlap two regions each. This year, the Paris area starts on the 15th, so we expect that week to be the busiest, especially since it is also the main UK week and part of the Netherlands too.”
Easter Sunday is at the late end of its range, though, not arriving until 20 April, 2025, meaning most schools will be on holiday the fortnight up to the Easter holiday weekend. That means the holidays will only start a few days later than last season, when Easter was three weeks earlier, but nonetheless some resorts and tour operators will have ended their seasons before Easter Sunday.
World Class Competition
© Saalbach Hinterglemm
With the Paris Summer Olympic Games behind us, its means the Winter Olympics are up next, but we have 18 months to wait until Milan-Corina 2026. The IOC did also announce at Paris that the 2030 Winter Olympics will be in the French Alps and even that 2034 will be back in Utah, so at least Team GB can plan well ahead.
There’s plenty to look forward to with the various World Tours, including the FIS Park & Pipe and Freeski Tours, which already got started in New Zealand in late summer with Britain’s Mia Brookes starting off her campaign with a second place in the first competition of 2024/25.
For the planet’s best alpine skiers, the big event this season is the FIS Alpine Skiing World Championships. They take place every two years and Saalbach Hinterglemm are hosts for 2025 from 4-16 February. As the season progresses, though, all eyes are likely to be on American superstar Mikaela Shiffrin, already the most successful tracer of all time with 97 World Cup wins as she heads towards becoming the first racer to pass the 100 victories mark.
Meanwhile, the 2025 FIS Snowboard, Freestyle and Freeski World Championships are heading to St Moritz from 17-30 March.
In terms of new competitions, the Invictus Games are staging their first-ever winter sports edition in Vancouver and Whistler from February 8-16, 2025.
Festivals
© Rise Festival
Music festivals continue to play a big part of the ski season and most of the annual favourites are back for 2024/25, including the return of the British Snowboard and Freeski Championships for the first staging in the Alps since 2019. They’re heading to Mayrhofen in Austria from 29 March to 5 April, a resort that already hosts the Altitude Comedy Festival (24-28 March) and Snowbombing (7-12 April), so you could book in for three weeks of non-stop festivals there.
But the first big festival of the season comes to Les 2 Alpes in France with the season-starter Rise Festival from 7-14 December.
That’s if you don’t count the three successive nights of gigs at Schladming in Austria from 6-8 December when Bryan Adams, Sting and Simply Red play on successive nights.
As usual, springtime sees the heaviest focus with Rock The Pistes in the Portes du Soleil from 16-22 March and Tomorrowland Winter also back in Alpe d’Huez with clashing dates from 15-22 March.
There are hundreds more festivals on the snow of all shapes and sizes across the skiing world.
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