There’s a joke in Austria that if you can’t ski properly, they make you move to Germany.
I’m not getting involved in that one.
What I will say is that Austria is ridiculously good at ski holidays. The lift systems are generally excellent, there’s a proper mountain-hut culture, après is taken extremely seriously and you can eat an unreasonable quantity of melted cheese without anyone questioning your life choices.
The difficult bit is choosing where to go.
Austria has hundreds of ski areas, ranging from tiny village hills to some of the biggest linked ski areas in Europe. So rather than attempt to cover hundreds of resorts, here are five very different places to start.
Ski Arlberg
Best for: Big-mountain skiing
If the skiing itself is the priority, Ski Arlberg is difficult to argue with.
It’s Austria’s largest connected ski area, with 300 km of pistes and more than 200 km of powder runs spread across St. Anton, St. Christoph, Stuben, Lech, Zürs and Warth-Schröcken.
That’s a lot of mountain.
St. Anton is probably the name most British skiers will recognise, particularly if they’ve ever shown the slightest interest in après. But the Arlberg is much bigger than St. Anton.
Lech and Zürs give you a more polished, expensive version of the experience. Warth-Schröcken is quieter and particularly snow-sure. And if you’re a strong skier or snowboarder, there’s an enormous amount of freeride terrain between the lot of them.
That’s where the Arlberg really stands out.
You can spend all week smashing around groomers if you want, but it feels slightly wasteful in a place with this much interesting terrain.
There are snowparks and funslopes too, so snowboarders aren’t being treated as an unfortunate administrative problem.
SkiWelt Wilder Kaiser-Brixental
Best for: Eating kilometres
SkiWelt is the sort of place where you look at the piste map in the morning and accidentally turn skiing into a logistics exercise.
And I mean that as a compliment.
It’s a huge linked area with villages dotted around the edges, loads of mountain huts and enough intermediate terrain to keep you moving all day.
The big appeal here is covering ground.
There’s a marked SkiWelt Tour that takes you around the area without repeatedly riding the same lifts and pistes. If you’re the sort of skier who enjoys looking at the map over breakfast and deciding you’re going all the way over there today, this is your place.
It’s also considerably more approachable than some of the gnarlier resorts on this list. You don’t need to be hunting couloirs or terrifying yourself on black runs to get your money’s worth.
The danger is the huts.
Austria has somehow perfected the mountain lunch to the point where stopping for food can quite easily end your ambitions for the afternoon.
Plan accordingly.
Saalbach Hinterglemm Leogang Fieberbrunn
Best for: A bit of everything
Saalbach is probably the easiest resort here to recommend to a group where everyone wants something different.
The Skicircus covers Saalbach, Hinterglemm, Leogang and Fieberbrunn, so you’ve got a massive amount of varied skiing rather than one mountain you’re going to know intimately by Wednesday.
Fieberbrunn is where things get particularly interesting. It’s a serious freeride destination and hosts Austria’s Freeride World Tour stop, with the competition face on the Wildseeloder reaching gradients of up to 70 degrees.
You absolutely don’t need to ski anything like that to enjoy the place.
There’s loads of normal piste skiing, plenty going on away from the lifts and enough huts that lunch can become an increasingly long-term commitment.
Which brings me to Kaiserschmarrn.
If you’ve somehow got this far in life without eating it, it’s essentially a big fluffy pancake torn into pieces and normally served with fruit compote and enough sugar to undo most of the skiing you’ve just done.
I’m a fan.
I once queued for an hour at Demel in Vienna for theirs and came extremely close to giving up.
I’m glad I didn’t.
It was genuinely one of the best things I’ve eaten, and I would happily stand in that stupid queue again.
Demel still sells Kaiserschmarrn from its street-side stand, incidentally, so if you’re passing through Vienna, you know what to do.
Ischgl
Best for: Ski hard, party harder
Ischgl isn’t subtle.
The Silvretta Arena links Austria with Samnaun in Switzerland and gives you 239 km of pistes, reaching 2,872 m. The 2026/27 season is scheduled from November 26 right through to May 2.
So if you’re looking for a snow-sure trip early or late in the season, it immediately becomes interesting.
The skiing is particularly good for confident intermediates and advanced riders. It’s a modern, fast lift system and you can cover a ridiculous amount of ground without spending half your day queueing or sitting on ancient chairs.
Then everyone starts drinking.
Ischgl’s après reputation is almost as big as its skiing reputation, and the resort leans into it hard. There are huge end-of-season concerts, bars all over the place and plenty happening long after the lifts stop.
There’s also night tobogganing if skiing all day somehow hasn’t provided enough opportunities to injure your dignity.
One thing I wouldn’t say, which I’ve seen several articles wrongly claiming, is that Ischgl is the cheap alternative to Switzerland.
It’s Ischgl.
Nobody has ever staggered away from an Ischgl bar thinking, well, that was remarkably good value.
Silvretta Montafon
Best for: Steeper pistes
Silvretta Montafon is smaller than the monsters above, but that doesn’t make it less interesting.
Particularly if you like steep pistes.
The resort has five runs it calls the Black Scorpions, with maximum gradients reaching 67%.
And yes, percentage gradient isn’t the same thing as degrees before anyone starts panicking. A 67% gradient is roughly 34 degrees.
Still steep.
There’s freeride terrain as well, so it makes sense if you care more about interesting skiing than ticking off hundreds of kilometres on a piste map.
It’s also a useful reminder that the biggest ski area isn’t automatically the best ski area.
There’s not much point desperately trying to ski 300 km just because somebody printed the number on a brochure.
And Then There’s the Food
The original version of this article gradually turned into a food guide.
I can’t really blame it.
Austria is extremely good at feeding people who’ve spent all day outside.
Kaiserschmarrn is non-negotiable for me, but you’ve also got Wiener Schnitzel, Käsespätzle, Tiroler Gröstl, dumplings, strudel and an impressive number of dishes based around the principle that cheese is probably the answer.
Mountain huts are a genuine part of the Austrian ski experience rather than somewhere you reluctantly buy a €14 sandwich.
Just be careful with lunch.
A massive plate of Käsespätzle followed by Kaiserschmarrn and a couple of schnapps can make the final run home considerably more technical than the piste map suggests.
A Few More Worth Looking At
Five resorts barely scratches Austria.
Kitzbühel is an obvious one, particularly if you want to see the Hahnenkamm downhill in January. Sölden gives you high-altitude skiing and the whole James Bond Spectre connection. Serfaus-Fiss-Ladis is excellent for families, while Schladming-Dachstein and the Zillertal Arena both give you huge amounts of skiing without necessarily having the same international name recognition as St. Anton or Ischgl.
I wouldn’t try to rank every Austrian resort from one to fifty. That’s not particularly useful.
Work out what you actually want from the trip.
For serious terrain, Ski Arlberg stands out. For a mixed group, Saalbach. For cruising around a massive piste network, SkiWelt. For skiing followed by a fairly aggressive night out, Ischgl. And if steep pistes matter more than sheer size, Silvretta Montafon deserves a look.
Whichever you choose, eat the Kaiserschmarrn.
I’m considerably more confident about that recommendation than I am about ranking ski resorts.
See you out there!
