Finland's 2026-27 Ski Season Starts in Just One Week, Here's How

Here we are, in North America, speculating about El Niño and hoping that, if we’re lucky, the ski season will get underway at the end of October. And should those stars align, it’ll only be a few resorts in Colorado, most likely. The widespread start of the 2026-27 season won’t come until late November, or about two months from now.

Not so in Finland, though, where the ski resort, Levi, has been hanging on to an enormous stash of leftover snow that will allow for one of the earliest official ski season starts in the Northern Hemisphere. 

Levi teased the forthcoming opening in a social media post this week, sharing that it all begins just a week from now, on October 2, 2026.

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Two things are true about the footage Levi shared from its early days last year. It is a white ribbon of death situation—when you use stored snow to get the jump on Mother Nature this early, it will probably involve a thin strip of snow surrounded by greenery. 

At the same time, look at that run! It’s a whole entire run! 

On this side of the pond, snow storage efforts, while fun and exciting, are, for the most part, far humbler. Trollhaugen, Wisconsin, uses its pile for a small rail jam set up each fall. Jay Peak, Vermont, hosted a similarly sized rail jam in June.

Levi, which has been honing its snow storage process since 2016, goes bigger. The gamut first started as a way to ensure it could host its early-season World Cup race. But when that worked, the technique, which involves using vast snow covers made by a company called Snow Secure to protect the stored snow during the warmer months, became a fixture at Levi for the general public, too. 

Now, the resort says it guarantees a seven-month ski season from October through May—a bold claim that Levi continually backs up.

It’s a fun preview of what might be possible if more North American resorts begin to catch on. Sun Peaks, in British Columbia, is one of this continent’s early adopters of the technique Levi uses, as is Aspen Snowmass, Colorado, where a Snow Secure pilot is underway this fall.

Related: The Snow League Tried Something Fresh in New Zealand, and It Was a Hit