A destination page is organised around time: when the place matters, which events make it matter, and how it changes across the year — then the practical geography (airports, marinas, neighborhoods, hotel areas).
Courchevel is not one village but four, stacked up a single valley in the Tarentaise, in Savoie: Le Praz at 1,300 meters, Courchevel Village at 1,550, Moriond at 1,650, and Courchevel 1850 at the top, each numbered for its approximate altitude. The whole resort was designed after the Second World War by the planner Laurent Chappis, making it, by its own account, the first ski resort in France built from scratch rather than grown around an existing settlement; local administration was consolidated into a single new commune only in 2017.
Courchevel is one of the entry points to Les Trois Vallées, marketed as the largest linked ski area in the world: roughly 600 kilometers of piste and 183 lifts connecting Courchevel with La Tania, Méribel, Les Menuires, Val Thorens and smaller villages across three valleys. Above Courchevel 1850, at just over 2,000 meters, sits the Altiport, a short, steeply sloped mountain airstrip that pilots require a specific qualification to use, and one of the more dramatic ways to arrive at any European resort.
Outside the ski season Courchevel is quiet: the higher villages, built purely for winter, close for much of the summer, and the resort's one dedicated public event, an international fireworks competition, is itself a winter fixture rather than a summer one. Visitors who come between seasons find a working mountain valley rather than a resort in the conventional sense.
01When Courchevel matters
Twelve months of activity computed from the events on this destination’s calendar — each event’s importance spread over the days it occupies. The events responsible for each month are listed beside the bar.
02The calendar here
Coming up
-
7 FebCourchevel · France · Cultural Festivals Courchevel International Fireworks FestivalRegional
Every event on the calendar
Subscribe to this destination’s calendar (ICS) · Open in the calendar
03Why it matters
Courchevel's claim on the calendar rests less on any single event than on its role as the best-known entry point to Les Trois Vallées, skiing's largest connected terrain; being reachable directly by small aircraft, at an altiport more often discussed than actually used, has done as much for the resort's reputation as its skiing. In our reading, Courchevel's origin as a purpose-built, planned resort, rather than a historic town that later added lifts, also explains its four-village structure, which offers noticeably different registers of accommodation - from Le Praz's quiet valley floor to Courchevel 1850's high, purpose-built center - within a few minutes of one another.
04The year, month by month
05Weather by month
| Month | High °C | Low °C | Rain mm |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 5.2 | -1.9 | 96.7 |
| February | 8.4 | -1.1 | 70.6 |
| March | 14.2 | 2.6 | 73.3 |
| April | 18.5 | 5.9 | 58.6 |
| May | 22.3 | 9.8 | 78.8 |
| June | 26.1 | 13.2 | 74.7 |
| July | 28.4 | 15.0 | 77.2 |
| August | 28.0 | 14.8 | 74.0 |
| September | 23.0 | 11.3 | 64.8 |
| October | 17.5 | 7.3 | 75.3 |
| November | 10.3 | 2.4 | 79.6 |
| December | 4.9 | -1.0 | 106.8 |
06Getting there and around
07Where things are
Neighborhoods
Hotel areas
Courchevel 1850 holds the resort's highest concentration of hotels directly on the piste, purpose-built rather than converted from an older village. Moriond and Courchevel Village offer progressively lower-altitude, generally less expensive alternatives with their own lift access, and Le Praz, at the valley floor, is the quietest and least expensive of the four.
Dining districts
Each of the four villages has its own restaurant cluster around its lift base, with Courchevel 1850's the largest and busiest; mountain restaurants across Les Trois Vallées operate for lunch service through the ski season.
Cultural institutions
Shopping
Courchevel 1850 carries the resort's concentration of boutiques, clustered around the village center near the Altiport; the lower villages have more limited, everyday shopping.
08How the place changes
Courchevel is almost entirely a winter resort. Its four villages are busiest, in order, over the Christmas and New Year fortnight, the Orthodox Christmas week in early January and the February school-holiday fortnight, with the international fireworks festival running through the same late-winter stretch. Summer brings a small, lower-key season of hiking and mountain biking, well short of winter's scale, and the resort is close to dormant between the two.
09History
Courchevel was designed after the Second World War by the planner Laurent Chappis as part of a coordinated plan to develop the Tarentaise valley for skiing, making it, by its own account, the first ski resort in France built from scratch rather than grown around an existing village. Its four villages - Le Praz, Courchevel Village, Moriond and Courchevel 1850 - were built in sequence up the mountainside through the second half of the twentieth century and were not consolidated into a single commune until 2017. Le Praz's ski jumps were built for the 1992 Albertville Winter Olympics. The resort's connection into what became Les Trois Vallées, now marketed as the world's largest linked ski area, was built up gradually as neighboring valleys developed their own lift networks over the same decades.
Nearby
Sources
- Courchevel, Wikipedia encyclopedia accessed 9 September 2026
- Les Trois Vallées, Wikipedia encyclopedia accessed 9 September 2026
- Moûtiers, Wikipedia encyclopedia accessed 9 September 2026