Courchevel opens its 80th winter on December 4, 2026, and the resort is treating the anniversary as more than a birthday. The season runs to April 18, 2027, with the wider Les 3 Vallées connections operating from December 5; high-altitude Val Thorens and Orelle stretch further, from November 21 through May 2. Founded from scratch in the French Alps in 1946, Courchevel has spent eight decades becoming the benchmark for luxury mountain travel, and this winter it is spending accordingly.
The capital programme is the busiest in recent memory. The headline project is a €5 million top-to-bottom renovation of the La Tania gondola, a key access point into the Courchevel sector that carries almost 400,000 passengers each winter. All 52 cabins are being replaced with new eight-person panoramic units, reusing towers, foundations, and cabling to cut the project's environmental footprint. It follows last winter's €25 million overhaul of the Côte Brune lift, which raised hourly capacity from 2,200 to 2,600 people while cutting cabin count from 128 chairs to 51 gondola cabins and removing 11 pylons. The pattern is consistent: higher throughput with a lighter footprint on the mountain.
The arrival question
Courchevel's altiport (CVF/LFLJ) is the most famous short runway in private aviation: 537 metres of asphalt with an 18.6 percent gradient, at 2,008 metres of elevation, with no go-around procedure, no instrument approach, and no lighting. The field mainly serves smaller fixed-wing aircraft such as the Pilatus PC-12 and Cessna 208 Caravan, plus helicopters, and only pilots with the specific qualification fly it. For most private travelers, the practical routing is a jet into Geneva, Chambéry, Grenoble, or Lyon, then a helicopter transfer to the resort or the altiport. The altiport sits beside the Pralong piste, so a direct arrival means skiing within minutes of touchdown.
The alternative routings are straightforward. Chambery-Savoie Mont Blanc takes larger jets and sits about an hour's drive away; Geneva is roughly two hours, with helicopter transfers that cut the journey to minutes. For groups, the arithmetic often favors landing the jet at Chambery and finishing by rotor: the helicopter ride over the Tarentaise valley is part of the arrival, not just the transfer.
Christmas, New Year, and the February school holidays place the greatest pressure on aircraft availability and Alpine airport capacity, and those weeks also drive demand for helicopters, chauffeurs, and handling teams. Travelers with flexible dates will find March and early April offer more choice of aircraft and airports, with the season's snowpack usually at its deepest.
Book the other end early too. Courchevel's palace-grade hotels commit their peak-season inventory far in advance, and the resort's 80th-anniversary programming is expected to draw additional demand to the December opening weeks. The season's calendar, from the opening celebrations to the spring competitions, rewards travelers who plan around it rather than through it.
Where to stay
The anniversary season's hotel news starts with Airelles, which reopens its two Alpine Maisons, Les Airelles Courchevel and Airelles Val d'Isère, on December 4, the resort's opening day. Aman's Courchevel address, Aman Le Mélézin, runs its winter season from December 10, 2026, to April 4, 2027, offering the brand's signature ski-in, ski-out calm in the heart of 1850. Availability across the festive period is already tightening, which is the annual reminder that Courchevel rewards the early: the best chalets, instructors, and restaurant tables are committed months before the first lift turns.
Eighty years after its inauguration, Courchevel is also looking past the season. With the Olympic flame set to return to the region in 2030, the resort is using the anniversary to reaffirm the identity it built from mountain pasture: craftsmanship, sporting pedigree, and development that treats the slopes as the asset. For the private traveler, the playbook is unchanged and worth repeating: book the aircraft before the chalet, the chalet before the restaurants, and give the altiport the respect its 537 metres demand.
Photography: Trisorn Triboon
