Christmas and New Year in Courchevel 2026: Events, Dining and How to Plan

On Christmas Eve in Courchevel, the front de neige at 1850 goes quiet just after dark. Then a ribbon of torchlight appears at the top of the slope and winds its way down: the instructors' torchlit descent, followed by Santa, who arrives by helicopter some years and by snow groomer in others. Fireworks close the evening. It happens every year, it is free, and children talk about it for months.

That is the short answer to what Christmas in Courchevel is like. The longer answer involves dates, dinner tables that vanish by October, and a resort that treats the last week of December as its opening night. Here is how the 2026 festive season shapes up, what is confirmed so far, and how to plan a week that actually works.

The dates that matter for 2026-27

Courchevel and Le Praz open on Friday 4 December 2026. Courchevel Village, Moriond and La Tania follow on Saturday 5 December, which is also when the full Three Valleys links open, and the season runs to 18 April 2027. By Christmas week the whole 600 km area is in play, not just the home slopes. These are the dates published by the lift company for 2026-27; like every published opening date in the Alps they stay provisional until the snow confirms them.

Christmas week 2026 runs from Saturday 19 to Saturday 26 December, with Christmas Day falling on the Friday. New Year week follows straight on, with the fireworks on Thursday 31 December. These two weeks are the most expensive and the most booked of the entire winter. If you only remember one date from this article, make it this one: the best chalets for these weeks are usually gone by the end of September. Our Christmas chalets and New Year chalets pages show what is genuinely still available for 2026.

For the wider calendar, including school holiday overlaps, our ski season dates guide covers the full winter.

Christmas week or New Year week

Both weeks run Saturday to Saturday, both sell out, and people assume the 31st is the trophy. In our own bookings it is the other way round: Christmas week goes first, and it goes faster.

The guests are much the same across the two. What changes is what a family wants from the holiday. Some want to shut the door and have Christmas privately, in the chalet, on nobody else's timetable. Others want to be out in the middle of 1850, in the lights and the crowd. Neither is the better week. They are different holidays.

If a family asks me to choose between the two, I say Christmas week. It carries the traditional feeling: Santa, the trees lit through the village, presents, fireworks. With snow on the ground the whole resort feels warmer. New Year week is a party. Christmas week is Christmas.

What the resort actually does for the festive season

From early December the villages switch on. Decorations and Christmas trees go up through 1850, Moriond, Village, Le Praz and La Tania, along with Christmas markets and a run of street events. The resort tends to mark opening weekend itself with festivities on the snowfront; last season that meant DJ sets, ski tests and a free breakfast on the slopes.

The fixed points of the week are the ones worth planning around. Christmas Eve brings the torchlit descent, Santa's arrival and fireworks. Between Christmas and New Year the resort centre fills with shows, concerts and entertainment, most of it free and family-oriented.

New Year's Eve at 1850 has grown into a proper open-air party on the snowfront. Last season the resort brought in DJs and the La Folie Douce crew, with fireworks over the village at midnight and a separate children's New Year party with its own DJ in the early evening. One honest caveat: the station has not yet published its December 2026 programme, so treat last season's format as a strong indication rather than a promise. The official agenda appears on courchevel.com in the autumn, and we will update this guide when it does.

If you are staying into the new year and can come back later in the winter, note that the International Fireworks Art Festival runs in February and March, with competing pyrotechnic teams firing over the slopes on successive evenings. It is one of the best free spectacles in the Alps and far less crowded than the festive weeks.

One correction worth making, because guests ask it every autumn: a stay starting around 20 December is not an early-season stay. The lifts open on 4 December, which gives the resort a fortnight to get going, and by Christmas week it is running at full speed. Lifts, ski schools, hire shops, the altitude restaurants, the shops in the village: all of it is working at once. The other side of that is the same demand landing on all of them at once. Instructors, ski hire, boot fitting and dinner tables all get harder from the day the festive weeks begin.

Christmas Eve in the chalet

A lot of families spend the 24th without leaving the chalet, and with children in the group it is usually the better version of the evening.

The tree can be up before you arrive. For small children, Santa can be arranged to come to the door. The dinner is built with the chef around what the family actually does at Christmas, which is not always a French or a British Christmas dinner. One family with a New York tradition wanted duck rather than turkey, so the chef cooked duck. The point is not to serve a standard festive menu. It is to make the evening feel like their Christmas rather than the resort's.

The rest follows on its own. Presents opened at home, the fire going, a good bottle open, and nobody pulling ski boots back on at eleven at night to walk down through the village. Our catered chalets are the properties set up for this, with a chef and staff already in the house.

Restaurants for the 24th and the 31st

This is where planning matters most, because Courchevel's restaurant scene at festive week is both the best in the mountains and the hardest to get into.

The village holds an extraordinary concentration of starred kitchens. Le 1947 at Cheval Blanc, Yannick Alléno's three-star restaurant, seats five tables per service. Le Sarkara at the K2 Palace serves Sébastien Vauxion's dessert-led two-star menu, unlike anything else in the Alps. Le Chabichou by Stéphane Buron and the Alpage at the Annapurna carry stars in 1850, and Le Farçon in La Tania gives you Julien Machet's star with ski-in access and a gentler bill. Our Michelin guide to Courchevel covers the full list, and our restaurant guide covers everywhere else worth your evening.

For the nights of 24 and 31 December specifically, expect set gala menus at the hotel restaurants rather than the usual carte, at gala prices. Tables for both nights are typically released and reserved months ahead, often to hotel guests first. Book the moment your accommodation is confirmed. October is realistic, November is hopeful, December is a waiting list.

Of the two nights, the 31st is by far the harder. Christmas dinner can usually be arranged. New Year's Eve is a different exercise. The late venues, La Ferme Saint-Amour at the Chabichou among them, can be close to impossible. Prices climb, some tables go as tickets or against a minimum spend, and the booking starts to behave less like a reservation than an auction. That happens even when the enquiry goes in early. There are not enough tables for the number of people who want one.

Which is why most of our guests now spend the 31st at home. A private chef takes the dinner, a butler takes the service, and the group keeps its own table, its own bottles and its own timing, with nobody watching the clock for a restaurant slot. Our private chef guide covers how that works and what it costs.

My own advice is usually to eat in and go out afterwards. The nightlife here is good and it does not start early, so you get the dinner you actually wanted and you still get the night, without paying an exceptional sum for a table because the date happens to be 31 December. Some guests do want the restaurant and want to be seen at it, which is a perfectly good reason to book one. It simply has to go in as early as the chalet, and the budget has to reflect what that night costs.

Beyond the slopes

A festive week here is not only skiing, and with young children it cannot be. The Forum in the centre of 1850, built for the 1992 Olympics, houses the resort's Olympic ice rink with public sessions through the winter, plus bowling and indoor climbing under the same roof. The floodlit toboggan run from 1850 down to Courchevel Village is roughly two kilometres of genuine, screaming fun and works in the evening after the lifts close.

Aquamotion, between Courchevel Village and Moriond, is the largest mountain water complex in Europe: indoor and outdoor pools, slides, a wave pool and a spa side for the adults. It earns its place on the one bad-weather afternoon most Christmas weeks produce. For the full off-slope list, our winter activities guide covers the lot.

One more for the curious: on one evening a week through the winter, Courchevel Le Praz lights up for the Millet Ski Touring night races, and watching several hundred headlamps climb the mountain with a vin chaud in hand is a better spectacle than it has any right to be.

If you are travelling with small children, childcare during festive week books out earlier than anything else in the resort. Our village by village childcare guide covers nurseries and kindergartens in each village, with ages and prices.

What it costs, and how to plan a week that works

Christmas and New Year are the two most expensive weeks of the winter, and the premium does not stop at the chalet. Instructors, dinner tables, ski hire and boot fitting all price the same way. Across the catalogue Christmas runs 39% and New Year 81% above a normal January week, and the same property in the third week of January is a different proposition entirely.

Nothing clever sits behind that. Everyone wants the same two weeks, and the resort does not grow to meet them.

So work backwards from the things that cannot flex. The chalet comes first: for Christmas and New Year 2026, serious enquiries should be in by September, which matches what we see in our own bookings every year. Flights and transfers next, remembering that the changeover Saturdays around Christmas are the busiest road days of the winter in the Tarentaise.

Then, in the same week you confirm the chalet, everything that depends on somebody else's availability: the chef, the tables for the 24th and the 31st, ski instructors, ski hire and boot fitting, childcare and ski school for the children. Lift passes and the ice rink can wait. None of the rest can. Booking equipment before you travel is worth doing in any week, and in the festive fortnight it is the difference between the right boots and whatever is left on the rack. The common mistake is treating the chalet as the booking and the rest as arrangements to be made once you get there. By the time you get there, the choice has gone.

Last thought. Courchevel at Christmas is expensive, crowded on the snowfront at 5pm, and impossible to book in November. It is also, with torches on the slope and fireworks over the rooftops, the single best version of Christmas the Alps produce. The families who come back every year are not wrong.

The 2026-27 opening and closing dates, village by village, were re-checked on 16 August 2026 against the lift company's own calendar and remain provisional until the snow confirms them. The station's official December 2026 programme was not yet published at the time of writing; this guide will be updated when it is. The sections on choosing between the two weeks, on Christmas Eve in the chalet and on New Year's Eve are first hand, from festive weeks we have run in the resort.

Sources: les3vallees.com, lift and piste opening calendar for Courchevel (2026-27 dates by village, checked 16 August 2026; festive season traditions) · courchevel.com (winter events, Millet Ski Touring, International Fireworks Art Festival, day-care listings) · enjoy-ski.com (New Year's Eve 2025 programme at 1850, cited as last season's format) · courchevel.rentals (Christmas chalets page, Michelin restaurants guide, ski hire guide).