New Year is Courchevel 1850 at full voltage — the most glamorous, most expensive and most booked week of the Alpine season, when the Palaces take reservations a year ahead and the altiport fills with private jets. A five-star New Year's Eve week for two starts from around €15,000. Here is how it works.
If Courchevel has one signature week, it is this one. The resort was France's first purpose-built ski station, opened in 1946, and the thing that made it a jet-set fixture came in 1961: the Altiport, the first mountain airfield you could fly a light aircraft straight into. Add the greatest concentration of Palace hotels in France and you have the Alps' definitive New Year address — and its busiest, priciest, most fully booked seven days. Here is the practical shape of it.
New Year at a glance
| What to know | |
|---|---|
| The dates | Peak runs ~20 Dec–4 Jan; New Year's Eve is Thursday 31 Dec 2026, the single busiest night |
| When to book | 6–12 months ahead; top chalets and suites a year+; galas and starred tables weeks ahead |
| What it costs | From ~€15,000 for a five-star week for two; chalets €60,000–€700,000 |
| Midnight | Free public fireworks on the snow-front at La Croisette — open to everyone |
| Skiing | Open and reliable, but the busiest pistes of the year — ski early |
The booking timeline — earlier than you think
New Year is the one week where “book ahead” means six to twelve months, and for the flagship chalets and top suites often more than a year. Chalets are let Saturday to Saturday — this season the changeover Saturdays are 26 December 2026 and 2 January 2027 — and many of the best impose a two-week minimum over the combined Christmas–New Year fortnight. Several Palaces open only for the winter and reopen in early December, which compresses the window further. Two moves the concierges won't prompt: reserve the New Year's Eve gala dinners and the marquee Michelin tables — Le 1947, Le Sarkara — the moment you hold the room, and settle the transfer before the changeover-day crush (below).
What a New Year week costs
It is the most expensive week of the year, running 40 to 80 per cent above the shoulder weeks. A comfortable five-star week for two starts around €15,000; a fully-staffed chalet runs from about €60,000 to €700,000 depending on size and address. The gala dinners are their own line: a public one such as Maya Bay's New Year's Eve with DJ The Avener carries a minimum spend of about €850 a head, while a six-course dinner elsewhere can be found nearer €120. Getting in adds more — a helicopter from Geneva runs roughly €2,000 to €4,200, a light turboprop into the Altiport from London €8,000 to €14,000. Use our budget calculator to size a realistic week.
| What | New Year price |
|---|---|
| Five-star week for two | from ~€15,000 |
| Fully-staffed chalet (the week) | ~€60,000–€700,000 |
| New Year's Eve gala dinner | ~€120 to €850+ min spend per head |
| Helicopter, Geneva → resort | ~€2,000–€4,200 |
| Light turboprop, London → Altiport | ~€8,000–€14,000 |
New Year's Eve itself — the free party most guests miss
Behind the private palace galas, Courchevel throws a genuinely good free public party, and it is the local secret worth knowing. On the snow-front at La Croisette — the central lift hub — the evening builds through a kids' hour, live sets (La Folie Douce has played it), and a torchlit descent by the ski-school instructors down the slope just before midnight, when the fireworks go up over the front de neige for a good twelve to fourteen minutes. It is open to everyone, no ticket, and the resort runs free gondolas and shuttles late into the night to move the crowd. Watch from a terrace above La Croisette for the best view.
The galas — the other half of the night
The snow-front party is the public New Year; the private one happens indoors. Every Palace and most of the destination restaurants stage black-tie New Year's Eve galas — a long dinner, champagne at midnight, live music and a DJ to see in the year. Some publish their price: Maya Bay's evening with DJ The Avener runs on a minimum spend of about €850 a head. The palace galas — at Cheval Blanc, Les Airelles, Le K2 Palace and the rest — mostly do not, and sell to house guests first, which is the practical reason to book the gala the day you book the room. The night, in the end, splits two ways: the fireworks on the snow, or the ballroom above it.
The altiport crunch
The Courchevel Altiport is half the resort's mystique and, at New Year, half its logistics problem. Its runway is 537 metres long on an 18.6 per cent gradient at 2,008 metres — you land uphill, take off downhill, and there are no go-arounds. Crucially it is day-VFR only: no runway lighting, no instrument approach, so nothing flies in or out after dark — a hard limit in late December, when the Alpine day is short. Only mountain-rated turboprops (the Pilatus PC-12, the King Air) and specially qualified pilots may use it; everything larger routes through Chambéry or Geneva, then transfers by road or helicopter. Across a peak winter the field sees thousands of movements, the great majority helicopters — and New Year is its tightest week.
The two New Years
Courchevel does not celebrate the turn of the year once. Its long-standing international clientele — historically with a strong Russian and Gulf presence, though the mix has shifted in recent seasons — brings a second peak around Orthodox Christmas on 7 January 2027 and the “Old New Year” of 13–14 January, so the glamour runs well past the 1st. The hotels play to it: Les Airelles, for instance, stages a “frozen Palace” transformation on 6 January. If you want the scene without the very peak of prices, the second week of January is the insider's window — full programming, marginally softer rates.
The insider's week — skiing and dining the crush
The pistes are open, groomed and snow-sure — Courchevel's north-facing slopes and top station at 2,738 m make late December reliable — but this is the busiest snow of the year. Two windows are noticeably calmer: the Saturday changeover day, when most guests are in transit, and the morning of 1 January, when the resort sleeps off the night before. Ski the main Croisette–Verdons–Saulire arteries early and lunch late; the sheer size of the Trois Vallées absorbs the numbers better than smaller resorts. Book mountain and Michelin tables weeks ahead. And mind the roads: a Geneva transfer takes 2h15–3h normally, but the last Saturday of the year can add four hours — arrive midweek if you can.
If you return in February
New Year's fireworks are a single midnight display; the resort's Festival International d'Art Pyrotechnique is a different, and arguably greater, spectacle — an international fireworks competition that tours the four villages on Tuesday evenings across February and early March, each show opened by a torchlit descent. In 2026 the Courchevel 1850 show fell on 3 March; the 2027 edition follows the same late-February-to-early-March window. Worth planning a second trip around.
Read on
Cost your week with the budget calculator, check the season dates, choose an address in our hotel ranking, weigh a cheaper base in 1850 versus 1650, or plan the journey in getting to Courchevel.
