The view from the top of the Åre ski area, February 2018. Photo: kallerna, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
A lift that was taken down after its cable broke is going back up, the snow guarantee triples, and the plan for the next big rebuild is out for public review while you read this.
Åre is rebuilding itself. Not in the vague sense that something is always going on, but with planning permission, construction work and official dates you can check. For winter 2026/27 a lift that has been gone for close to a decade returns, snowmaking gets a serious addition, and the municipality is right now running the public review of the detailed plan that decides what Åre looks like in ten years.
Here is what is actually settled, what is still only a proposal, and what in Åre does not change either way.
The 1000-metre lift is rising again
The biggest news is that the 1000-metre lift is coming back. SkiStar was granted planning permission in May 2026, and by the end of August the lift was going up on Åreskutan. Sebastian Thomasson, destination director for Åre, described the work at that point as on schedule.
The new lift is being built as a modern drag lift. That is a deliberate choice rather than a budget one: a drag lift has fewer parts that can ice up or start wrong, and it can run in weather that stops a chairlift line.
Why it disappeared in the first place
Rimed chairlift seats on Åreskutan in December 2010. This is not the 1000-metre lift, but it shows exactly the kind of icing that brought it down. Photo: Anders Carlsson, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
The 1000-metre lift was Åre's first lift in the high zone, and the one that made skiing the very top of Skutan possible at all. In January 2017 the haul rope broke during a multi-day storm with heavy icing, and the installation was dismantled afterwards.
Since then lift-served skiing on Åreskutan has stopped a good deal lower, and that is exactly the argument for building it back. A resort that loses its highest lift does not only lose the view, it also loses its fallback route when the weather makes the lower express lines unreliable.
1,319 metres, and a partly new line
The top station lands at 1,319 metres above sea level, which makes the new lift Åre's highest. From there the whole Åre valley lies below you.
The line will be partly new compared with the old lift. The practical gain is that you can stay up in the high zone and keep skiing, instead of getting all the way down to the village between runs. Less transport, more skiing, and more time on the part of the mountain where the terrain is steepest.
Snow: 51 new guns and a guarantee that triples
Alongside the lifts sits the investment that will probably affect more ski days. SkiStar's snow guarantee for Åre runs from 18 December 2026 to 4 April 2027 and promises at least 30 open runs throughout the period. The equivalent figure before was 10.
Behind the promise are 306 million kronor in snowmaking and 489 new snow guns spread across SkiStar's resorts. Of those, 51 go to Åre. It is the kind of investment that never shows up on a map but decides whether the week before Christmas is a skiing week.
The Getval lift showed the pattern
The new 1000-metre lift follows a pattern already visible on the hill. The Getval lift was built in summer 2025 and ran its first season in 2025/26. It is a drag lift that takes pressure off the Sadel express and gives a sheltered route between Björnen and central Åre, for the days when the express stands still in high winds.
The same season the floodlighting in the Björnen area was extended all the way from the Högås lift to Copperhill and the Järv lift. Put the parts together and the strategy is clear: fewer days when the weather stops play, and more hours per day when it does not.
Why some slopes handle weather better than others, and why the runs open in a particular order, is covered in the article on the season opening.
The next step is out for review right now
The cable car's top station. The cabin still carries its livery from the 2007 Alpine World Championships. The detailed plan proposes demolishing this installation. Photo: Skistar, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
What would really redraw Åre has not been decided yet. Åre municipality is running the public review of the detailed plan for developing the cableway facility in Åre between 28 August and 20 September 2026. The plan area covers roughly 110 hectares and runs from Stjärntorget up to the cable car's top station.
The proposal contains three things that would be noticed immediately. The Skut gondola replaces today's cable car along a new line with better weather protection. The 1000-metre lift appears as a re-established high alpine lift. And a new World Cup race run is drawn in, along with space for the temporary structures a major championship needs. In the plan the cable car and the Hummel lift are demolished, and the VM6 lift is moved.
Two things are worth keeping apart here. A detailed plan under review is a proposal collecting comments, not a decision taken. And even an adopted plan says what may be built, not when anyone builds it. The cable car has been on its way out in various versions since the mid-2010s.
The one thing that does not change
In the middle of all this the mountain stands still. Lifts get torn down and built, lines are redrawn, restaurants open and close. But the steep faces pitch the way they did, the valley runs where it runs, and it is still 1,420 metres up to the summit of Åreskutan.
That permanence is what our Åre piece is made of. It is built on real elevation data for the area and shaped layer by layer, so that every slope and every contour sits where it actually sits. No lift line is drawn on it, for exactly the reason this article is about: lift lines move, terrain does not.
What a ski resort's figures actually measure, and why 890 metres of vertical does not mean the same thing in Åre as in the Alps, is covered in the guide to a ski resort's key figures.
Take Åre home
The Åre piece is available now. Handmade to order, ready to hang.
Do you ski a different part of the mountain, or have a completely different favourite resort? With FRMD by You you choose any place on the map and have it designed as its own piece. Read more about FRMD by You.
If you want to read more about the mountain itself, there is our article on Åre, the terrain and the piece.