Skiing Unlocked's Guide to the 2026/27 FIS Alpine World Cup
This weekend marks the beginning of the 61st FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup, with athletes taking on 43 men’s and 40 women’s races to fight for the Crystal Globe across all four Alpine disciplines.
Starting as is traditional on the high glacier terrain of Sölden, Austria, the World Cup circuit dances across Europe and North America before concluding with the finals weekend at Sun Valley, Idaho.
It includes stops at some of the most historic venues in the world of ski racing in a year when competition will prove fiercer than ever before.
So here is Skiing Unlocked’s guide to the 2026/27 FIS Alpine World Cup
The Disciplines
Racers compete across all four disciplines of Alpine skiing to be crowned winner, although no-one actually competes across all four, racers instead sticking to two or three of their favoured disciplines.
Victory in any event awards 100 points; 80 for second, 60 for third, and decreasing amounts all the way down to 1 point for 30th place. This allows for racers to secure a World Cup without having to compete in all four disciplines, and allows rookies trying to breakthrough a nice aiming point - a top 30 finish to claim their World Cup points.
Downhill Skiing
Kicking off first are the downhill events. This event is all about speed – quite simply, who can ski from top to bottom of the mountain in the fastest time, combined across two runs. Courses are long and often with some sharp corners and jumps thrown in, making it the ultimate test of speed, strength, and stamina.
Starting order is drawn randomly for run one, but, after half the field is cut for the second round, racers line up in reverse order, slowest to fastest, for run two. Ones to watch are Switzerland’s Marco Odermatt - current Men’s winner five times running - and Lara Gut-Berami and Mikaela Schiffrin, the latter a six-time World Cup winner and, quite simply, the greatest to ever do it.
Slalom Skiing
This is the Monaco Grand Prix of ski racing – where legends are forged amidst a tight, twisty, short course that is all about technique and skill, testing the skier’s ability to keep the skis moving and turning around a series of poles. Miss a pole? Disqualified. Straddle a pole? Disqualified. There is no room for error here. Alongside the main path there are additional poles added in to confuse racers, and sometimes the alternating colour order (between red and blue poles) swaps over as skiers whip through “flushes” of tightly place gates.
Despite inventing this discipline in time for the 1936 Olympics, Britain has struggled with it ever since. That changed on one famous day in 2022 when Dave “The Rocket” Ryding became the first Britain ever to win an Alpine World Cup gold in Kitzbuhel. Dave retired at the end of the 2025/26 season, but for his compatriots Billy Major and Laurie Taylor as well as up-and-coming Luca Carrick-Smith, this is certainly their strongest events and where some of Britain’s best medal hopes lie.
Giant Slalom & Super-G Skiing
These two events sit between the extremes of slalom and downhill – Super-G (short for “Super Giant Slalom”) is effectively a downhill run with extra turns enforced on the piste, sort of like when Le Mans added chicanes to the Mulsanne Straight.
At the other end is Giant Slalom (GS), which is Slalom but … you guessed it, made bigger, still competing on a short track.
The Venues
The season for this winter has remained fairly static, with no major venue changes on the cards - although Tremblant is in the final year of a three-year deal after taking the only Canadian slot on the calendar off Banff Lake Louise.
Opening at Sölden, the circuit heads to Levi, Finland, then back to the Ötztal with Obergurgl, just down the valley from Sölden. The Men’s and Women’s then split up as the circuit heads to North America.
The highlights of the winter are undoubtedly the run of races through December and January for the Women; the Corviglia in St Moritz, a stop at the World Championship course in Courchevel - earmarked for the 2030 Olympics - and the indomitable Tofana course in Cortina, most recently host of the speed events at the 2026 Winter Olympics.
For the men, the run of five races either side of the Crans Montana World Champinships are the pinnacle - Wengen’s Lauberhorn downhill, Kitzbühel’s Streif downhill and slalom courses (where Ryding took gold in 2022, Schladming’s night slalom course, Chamonix’s slalom, and finally Garmisch Partenkirchen’s historic Kandahar course.
This collection of events are some of the most historic and prestigious races in the world of ski racing. Victory at one of these will secure your name in the history books, even if you don't taste success anywhere else - the Monaco, Silverstone, Monza and Nurburgring of the calendar.
Not every venue will host every discipline; indeed, it is only on Finals Weekend at Sun Valley, 20th to 25th March 2027, that a single venue will host all four disciplines over one race weekend.
Constructors Championship
Unlike Formula 1, there is no formal constructor’s championship. Brands do, however, keep track of wins and losses and brand reps take immense pride in seeing their kit do well on the World Cup circuit.
In the same way as in motor sport, what wins on Sunday is what sells on Monday. Racers are sponsored by various brands, so expect to see them carry their skis with them wherever they go, including in the winner’s enclosure and on the podium. Some brands may also swap out their racer’s ski with a more photogenic “dummy” ski before they get on the podium, but I’m not spilling the beans on who …
World Cup vs. World Championship
This year, the World Cup is split in two by the 2027 Alpine Skiing World Championship in Crans Montana. This is a distinct event, and success in one has no bearing on the other.
World Championships take place every two years, with the previous one being in Meribel-Courchevel. They feature all four disciplines, for men and women, as well as a “combined” event adding up times in downhill and slalom disciplines.
Where to Watch?
In the UK the traditional home of Alpine ski racing is on Eurosport, and that remains the case for this winter. You can also watch the races of Discovery+ as well as the FIS's own channel, FIS TV
