THE GSTAAD SEASON

The Gstaad Season is the fortnight from Christmas to the New Year in Gstaad, a village of the commune of Saanen in the Bernese Oberland, at 1,050 metres: the hotels open in the middle of December, the slopes of the Wispile, the Eggli and the Wasserngrat by day, the Promenade in the evening, and on the last night of the year the Gstaad Palace’s gala and the cowbells of Gsteig at midnight. No one organises it and no one sells a ticket to it. “The high point of Gstaad’s calendar is New Year. This is when the jet-set descend and the Krug seriously flows.”

Its regulars came for the quiet, and for the absence of autograph hunters.

The Village

The chapel of St Nicholas was built in 1402. The village that stands around it was rebuilt for visitors after the great fire of 1898, and the railway from Montreux to Lenk reached it in 1905. The Gstaad Palace opened in 1913, the first grand hotel in Gstaad, and has been kept by the Scherz family for three generations. The first ski school opened in 1923.

In 1957 Charles Greville, the 7th Earl of Warwick, paid for the Eagle Ski Club, a private members’ ski club and restaurant in a chalet at the top of the Wasserngrat, with himself as its first president and the Aga Khan among its founders. The club publishes almost nothing. The same year Yehudi Menuhin gave a concert in the church at Saanen, and from it grew the Gstaad Menuhin Festival.

In the 1960s Time called Gstaad “The Place”. Roger Moore came, and Gunter Sachs, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, Princess Grace and Menuhin, who found there what Zermatt and St. Moritz did not offer. Valentino, William F. Buckley Jr., Charles III and Diana have been regulars too.

Institut Le Rosey keeps its winter campus in the village, and in the ski season the parents take suites at the Palace, the Alpina and the Bellevue.

The Fortnight

The hotels open first: the Alpina on 11 December 2026, the Palace on 15 December, Le Grand Bellevue on 18 December. Since 1998 the centre of the village has been largely free of cars, the through traffic sent round it by a tunnel, and the Promenade between the shops, restaurants and hotels is walked rather than driven.

By day there is the Wispile, the Eggli and the Wasserngrat, where the Tiger Run is steep, and nearby Glacier 3000, with its suspension bridge, the Peak Walk. The village’s other winter fixtures are the New Year Music Festival, the Sommets Musicaux and, in January, a week of hot-air balloons.

In the evening the village dresses. At the Palace, from seven o’clock, gentlemen wear a jacket in Le Grill, the Bar du Grill and the Veranda of Le Grand, and no one in the restaurants and bars wears a cap, a hoodie, a T-shirt, ripped jeans or snow boots. The lobby bar is called Gstaad’s living room.

On New Year’s Eve the Palace gives a gala in costume to a theme, “Vintage Circus” in 2025, with the aperitif at eight and dinner at half past nine. At midnight the Treichler of Gsteig ring in the year with their great cowbells, and the night goes on at GreenGo, the Palace’s nightclub since 1971, whose dance floor lies over the swimming pool.

In 2026 the Palace’s winter season runs from 15 December to 7 March 2027, and the gala is on 31 December; its theme has not been announced.

What to Know

The season runs from Christmas to the New Year, and the village stays busy into January. The Palace’s dates for the winter of 2027 to 2028 have not been announced; its summer runs from 20 June to 5 September 2027.

There are no tickets. The places are the Gstaad Palace, the Alpina Gstaad, Le Grand Bellevue, the Park Gstaad and the Hotel Olden, and for New Year’s Eve the Palace’s gala.

Country attire by day. In the evening a jacket, as the Palace asks, and the Court wears a lounge suit; on the 31st, the gala’s theme.

Geneva and Zurich airports are two to two and a half hours by car, and private aircraft land at the Saanen airfield. By train from Geneva Airport, change at Montreux for the GoldenPass line up through the mountains, about three hours.

The mistake is to come down to Le Grill without a jacket. The rule begins at seven o’clock.

The Court

The Gstaad Season is not the Court’s own. Rooms for the fortnight and places at the Palace’s New Year’s Eve gala are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay in Gstaad, and the table afterward. The Hahnenkamm Races follow in late January.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.