Verbier at One Hundred
and Something
New lifts, a retiring gondola and a centenary mountain hut. Verbier’s 2025/26 season is about renewal as much as snow.
A gondola built in 1970 will take its last passengers this winter. In summer 2026, its cabins will be auctioned — not demolished, auctioned — and replaced by a new télémixte combining chairlifts and gondola sections in a single, more efficient run. The detail says something about Verbier: old infrastructure is worth something here, even as it is retired.
Switzerland’s largest linked ski area enters winter 2025/26 with a season that runs for 151 days, from November through to late April. Weekend openings precede full daily lift service in early December. Skiing rises above 2,700 metres. Just under two-thirds of the terrain is supported by snowmaking. These are not small numbers, but they are not the focus of this winter.
- 151 days — November 2025 to end of April 2026
- 2,700m+ — maximum skiing altitude
- 410km — total pistes across the 4 Vallées
- 63% of terrain covered by snowmaking
- 5,000 chalet beds vs 1,300 hotel beds
- UK — leading overseas overnight market
The focus is the Savoleyres télémixte — the new installation that, once its lower section follows next season, will connect Verbier and the Savoleyres–La Tzoumaz sector without the bus connections that previously linked them. A second upgrade, a replacement chairlift at Lac des Vaux, improves access to Col de Chassoure, a gateway to some of the area’s more sought-after off-piste routes within the 410km 4 Vallées.
Then there is Cabane Mont Fort.
Perched at 2,457 metres and built in 1925 by the Swiss Alpine Club, the hut marks its centenary this season. On 13 December, a commemorative mass will be led by the canons of the Great St Bernard. One hundred mountain guides in uniform will attend, followed by a torchlit descent. It is a programme that could have been designed purely for media, but the authenticity runs deeper than that. The hut has been part of the Haute Route landscape for a century. The guides are not props.
“In a mature Alpine market, longevity is earned through renewal — and renewal is harder than reinvention.”
Le Chaman, opening in December on the former Chez Martin site in central Verbier, adds a bistronomic restaurant to an already well-established food scene. For those extending into April, the end-of-season calendar includes the Verbier Art Summit and the Ultime Session.
The UK remains the leading overseas overnight market for Verbier. That is partly geography — Geneva Airport is close and well served — and partly culture. The British relationship with Verbier is long, familiar and commercially significant. The resort’s combination of advanced terrain, established freeride culture and a wide accommodation mix, weighted toward chalets rather than hotels, suits the way many UK skiers travel.
This is not a winter of reinvention. It is a winter of consolidation, which in a resort of Verbier’s standing, is the harder thing to do well.
