All ski resorts in the French Alps: full guide

There are close to 200 ski resorts in the Alps. On this page, we feature 185 of them. That’s because the first question is what actually counts as a ski resort. For our part, we consider it to be an urban settlement that provides access to a ski area. Some snow stadiums exist without any accommodation at all — in that case, the settlement is reduced to a car park and a few service buildings. Some resorts are also made up of several separate sites — La Plagne, Les Arcs, Valmeinier, Serre Chevalier — that are marketed under a single destination name. Boundary changes or council mergers have sometimes merged resorts too: La Tania became a district of Courchevel, Termignon became part of Val Cenis… All this complexity makes it genuinely difficult to pin down the exact number of ski resorts in the Alps, or in France.

The boundary between the Northern and Southern Alps is usually placed south of the Vercors, the Écrins and the Maurienne valley. North of this line, the climate is said to be oceanic, with reliable snow cover in winter. South of it, skiing is said to be sunnier, but with less abundant snowfall. In reality, the Alps’ winter climate is far more complex than that. The Southern Alps are sometimes snowier, thanks to Mediterranean weather episodes and easterly weather patterns along the border. The dividing line itself can shift too. The Haute-Maurienne, between Valfréjus and Val Cenis, for instance, enjoys a sheltered winter climate at the heart of the Alps that’s noticeably drier and sunnier than the rest of the Northern Alps. Slope orientation also has a major influence on snow cover.

To find an easily accessible ski resort, it helps to head for lower-altitude resorts to avoid mountain roads: Morillon, Samoëns, Orelle 3 Vallées, Saint-Gervais, Megève… You could also look at the Alps ski resorts closest to Paris or Lyon. For example, you can reach La Clusaz, Savoie Grand Revard or Chamrousse in under 4 hours by train from Paris, or in 5h30 by car to La Clusaz or Villard-de-Lans.

You can ski in Alps resorts from October to May, and even in summer from mid-June to the end of July. Tignes has the longest ski season alongside Les 2 Alpes — both resorts offer glacier skiing. If you’re a ski tourer, you can generally ski until the end of May in the northern sectors without any restriction. As a general rule, the rest of the Alps’ resorts offer alpine skiing from December (most often from the start of the school holidays) through to mid-April. For cross-country skiing, conditions generally allow skiing from late November, depending on the first snowfalls, through to the end of March.

La Plagne is the largest ski resort in the Alps — it simply has the highest number of tourist beds. The largest ski areas are Les 3 Vallées (600km of pistes), Les Portes du Soleil (600km of pistes) and Paradiski (425km). Next come Les Portes du Mont Blanc, Les Sybelles, Tignes-Val d’Isère and Le Grand Massif. The best-equipped ski areas are Les 3 Vallées and Tignes-Val d’Isère. For cross-country skiing, the largest areas in the Alps are Autrans-Méaudre, Savoie Grand Revard, the Haut Vercors and Bessans.

It’s easier to define the largest resort than the smallest one. There are several ski resorts with just a single drag lift and one or two pistes. In our listing, Saint-Jean-de-Sixt, with a beginners’ ski area, is the smallest ski resort in the Alps, alongside Lullin (Haute-Savoie), Montagne de Lure and Val Pelens. Among the small resorts, we’re particularly fond of Aillons-Margériaz, La Sambuy, Lans-en-Vercors, Savoie Grand Revard, Le Semnoz, Crévoux, Pelvoux and Ceillac.
According to Domaines Skiables de France, the Alps have 123 small resorts, 30 medium resorts, 43 large resorts and 14 very large resorts. This classification is based on the hourly transport capacity of a resort’s lift network (its overall lift throughput).