Dolomites in October 2026: lifts open to 8 November and 12 hotels for larches

The Dolomiti Supersummer lift season runs until 8 November 2026, and the larches began turning in the middle of September. Those two dates bracket the best five weeks of the Dolomites year for anyone who is not skiing. The passes are empty. The huts on the high plateaux are still open. The forests between 1,500 and 2,100 metres go from green to gold to copper before the first snow. Below are the lifts that keep running into November, the events that mark the season, and twelve hotels whose autumn dates and offers are published, so that October can be booked with a calendar rather than a hope.

Larches: the only conifer that turns

The Dolomites’ autumn colour comes from one tree. One. As the Alta Badia tourist board puts it, the larch is the only conifer in the Dolomites that loses its needles, and its forests turn “into shades of yellow and gold” before they fall. Val Gardena’s board gives the timetable: from the middle of September the needles go from green to yellow, then to orange, red and brown; the last cable cars close in the first week of November. Forestis, on the Plose at 1,800 metres, says on its own site that September and October are the best months to visit; Aman Rosa Alpina promises sunrises over “larch forests turn[ing] golden in their autumn finery”. In most valleys the colour peaks in the second half of October, which is exactly when most of the lifts stop.

The lifts that run into November

This is the part that decides the trip. Read it twice. The Sellaronda circuit closed for the summer on 27 September. Alta Badia’s main lifts, Col Alto, Boé, Piz La Ila and the Vallon, stop on 4 October; only the Falzarego cable car to the Lagazuoi runs on to 18 October, with the Cinque Torri chairlift to 11 October. Val Gardena is the late-season valley. The Ortisei to Seceda gondolas run to 2 November, Col Raiser to 1 November and the Ortisei to Alpe di Siusi cable car to 2 November. Resciesa and Ciampinoi close on 11 October. The Alpe di Siusi cable car from Siusi runs to 2 November as well, from 8:00 to 18:00, and the tourist board notes that many of the huts on the plateau stay open until it stops. The Plose lifts above Bressanone run to 1 November, and Kronplatz, the last of all, to 8 November, the day the Dolomiti Supersummer season ends. A summer day pass costs 67 euros, the season pass 415. Winter follows almost at once. Kronplatz, Val di Fiemme and San Martino di Castrozza open on 28 November, Alta Badia, Val Gardena, Val di Fassa and Arabba on 4 December.

The autumn calendar

Alta Badia runs Munts dl altonn, three weeks of guided walks and outdoor days, from 13 September to 4 October, and the Enrosadira Trail, a mountain run of 20, 40 or 55 kilometres, on 10 October. Cortina holds the Festa del Desmonteà on 17 and 18 October, the return of the cattle from the high pastures through the town, and the Fiat 500 gathering from 2 to 4 October. Alta Badia’s Rait de San Linert falls on 7 November. Then the calendar turns to winter: the Cortina Fashion Weekend runs from 4 to 8 December, the day the Alta Badia lifts reopen, and the two new Cortina hotels, The First on 4 December and Mandarin Oriental Cristallo in early 2027, are covered in our openings calendar.

Twelve hotels with autumn dates on the page

Almost no Dolomites hotel prints a closing date. So the table below uses what the hotels do publish: the validity of their autumn offers. Read “open until” as “open at least until”. The Adler group is the clearest. Adler Lodge Ritten on the Renon plateau says it will stay open through January for the first time, a 365-day resort, and sells a Super Spa Special from 1 to 6 November at 882 euros for three nights and an Essence of Autumn stay from 12 November at 1,151 euros. Adler Spa Resort Dolomiti at Ortisei, with 4,000 square metres of spa and five pools, runs Golden Autumn Weeks from 4 to 29 October at 636 euros for three nights, with guided hikes and e-bikes included, and a November Relax stay to 3 December from 720 euros. Adler Lodge Alpe, 18 suites and 12 chalets at 1,800 metres on the Alpe di Siusi, sells Autumn on Alpe di Siusi from 11 October to 1 November at 1,570 euros per person for three nights, all-inclusive. Hotel Fanes at San Cassiano offers seven nights for the price of six from 20 September to 1 November at 1,404 euros per person in half board, and reopens for winter on 3 December.

The classic Alta Badia and Val Gardena houses close in the second half of October. Aman leads them. Aman Rosa Alpina at San Cassiano, 51 rooms and suites at 1,537 metres with a 1,684-square-metre spa and a 20-metre heated outdoor pool, runs its summer and autumn programmes until 18 October and its winter offers from 4 December. Gardena Grödnerhof at Ortisei, 64 rooms with the one-star Anna Stuben under Reimund Brunner, publishes summer offers to 18 October. COMO Alpina Dolomites on the Alpe di Siusi, 60 rooms at 1,800 metres, states its season plainly, June to October, and gives every third night free for stays in October. Hotel La Perla at Corvara, the Costa family’s 48 rooms with Simone Cantafio’s starred La Stüa de Michil, runs a four-nights-for-three offer to 4 October and again from 8 December. In Cortina, Rosapetra Spa Resort, 33 rooms with a 12-metre heated pool, sells an autumn stay valid from September to November, and Hotel de Len, 22 rooms with a rooftop spa, publishes offers to 3 October and winter rates from 1 December. Two houses stay open through the season change: Forestis, 62 suites at 1,800 metres above Bressanone, and Lefay Resort Dolomiti at Pinzolo, with 5,000 square metres of spa, whose only seasonal closure is in the spring.

How to plan the week

Match the valley to the date. That is the whole method. For the first ten days of October, Alta Badia works: the lifts are still turning, the Enrosadira Trail passes on the 10th, and Aman, La Perla and Fanes are all open. For the second half of October, when the colour peaks, go where the cable cars still run: Val Gardena for the Seceda, the Alpe di Siusi for the plateau, the Plose for Forestis. For the first week of November, when the last lifts close and the huts shut behind them, the answer is a spa hotel that does not depend on them: the Adler lodges, Lefay, or Cortina, where the Lagazuoi cable car has closed but the town has its Desmonteà behind it and its December opening ahead. The one thing not to do is arrive on 20 October in Alta Badia expecting to ride to the Vallon. The lift closed sixteen days earlier.

The Luxury.it perspective

The Dolomites sell two seasons. They have three. The third, from the closing of the Sellaronda to the opening of Alta Badia’s pistes, is ten weeks long and the hotels have only recently started to price it as something other than a gap. Adler’s decision to keep the Ritten lodge open all year, and Bad Moos in Sesto staying open in November for the first time, are the signs of a market that has noticed what the Val Gardena board already writes on its own pages: the colour begins in mid-September and the Seceda runs to All Souls. A three-night stay at Ortisei in the Golden Autumn Weeks costs 636 euros with the hikes included. In February the same valley is a different price. For a reader who does not ski, October is the moment the Dolomites are cheapest and emptiest. For five weeks they are also at their most beautiful. Our earlier guide to the new hotels of the Dolomites covers the houses built for exactly this season.

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