Slope Scout
← All snow reports
22 to 28 August 2026

Snow report, 28 Aug 2026: the off season countdown

Nothing meaningful fell across the 184 resorts we track, which is exactly what an August week should look like. The interesting number is the calendar: the first listed openings are about a week out, led by Sölden.

Resorts sampled
184
Average new snow
0 cm
Forecast next 7 days
0 cm
Trend
thin

The honest version

Between 22 to 28 August 2026, the 184 European resorts in the Slope Scout database averaged 0 cm of new snow, and the coming seven days are modelled at 0 cm. In other words, nothing. That is the correct answer for this point in the year, not a data problem.

The exceptions are the places whose listed seasons run through the summer: Les Deux Alpes and Saas Fee. These are glacier and very high altitude areas where lift served snow is a normal part of the calendar rather than a weather event, and they are the only resorts on our list whose published season currently includes this week.

Snowfall over the past week

The resorts that picked up the most new snow in the seven days just gone, in centimetres. We have now banked 1 week of observed snowfall, and the archive grows every Monday.

Nothing measurable fell anywhere on our list this week, so there is no chart to draw. That is normal out of season.

The season calendar

Working from the season dates we hold for every resort, the next openings are about a week out. Sölden in Austria is first on the list, with a published season of Sep to May and a summit at 3,340 m.

Close behind: Pitztal Glacier (October), Stubai Glacier (October), Zell am See Kaprun (October) and Kaprun (October). These are published season windows rather than confirmed opening dates, so resorts move them a week either way depending on cover, but as a planning framework they hold up well.

The main wave is later. Most of the resorts we track list a season starting in December, which is 14 weeks out, roughly 3 months from the end of this reporting week. If you are picturing a full mountain with every lift turning, that is the date to work back from.

Highest forecast snowfall, week ahead

Modelled totals for the next seven days. Forecasts this far out move around, so treat the order as a steer rather than a promise.

No resort on our list is forecast a meaningful fall over the coming week.

The first realistic options

If you want the earliest credible skiing rather than the earliest possible, look at the resorts with the longest listed seasons. Les Deux Alpes (Nov to Aug, 3,600 m), Saas Fee (Year round, 3,600 m), Sölden (Sep to May, 3,340 m) and Stubai Glacier (Oct to Jun, 3,210 m) all run seasons of seven months or more in our data.

Length of season is a decent proxy for altitude and glacier access, and those are the two things that make an October or November trip work rather than disappoint. The trade off is that early season means partial terrain: a high sector open, the valley runs closed, and the character of the resort not fully switched on yet.

The useful bit

Mid-summer is when the season's accommodation is priced and released rather than when it is skied. Practically, that means the decisions worth making this month are about where and when, not about snow. Pin the week, pin the region, and keep the resort choice open until the autumn if you can.

Early season deals tend to surface around the point resorts confirm their opening dates, and they cluster on the weeks either side of the main opening wave rather than in the school holidays. That is also when lift pass prices and package rates are most negotiable, because occupancy is not yet locked in.

Our own view is that the off season is the right time to widen your shortlist rather than narrow it. Prices and cover vary enormously between neighbouring valleys, and the resorts that look interchangeable on a map are not interchangeable on a bill.

Reading while you wait

If you are researching rather than booking, these are the pages that do the comparison work for you. Each one is built from the same resort database behind this report.

How we put this together

Snowfall figures come from Open-Meteo's mountain model, sampled at each resort's coordinates and totalled over the seven days to 28 Aug 2026. Season dates and summit elevations come from the resort records in our own database and are published seasons, not confirmed opening announcements. Where we have not verified something, we have left it out.

Opening soonest