Davos

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).

At about 1,560 meters in the Rhaetian Alps, between the Plessur and Albula ranges, Davos ranks among the highest towns of its size anywhere in Europe. Fewer than 11,000 people live there year-round. Nineteenth-century physicians sent tuberculosis patients to Davos for its dry, thin mountain air, building a sanatorium economy that Thomas Mann fictionalized in The Magic Mountain after his wife's own stay; when antibiotics made the sanatoria obsolete in the mid-twentieth century, the town turned the same infrastructure and terrain toward skiing, and today runs one of Switzerland's larger ski areas, with roughly 320 kilometers of slopes.

For one week each January, none of that is what Davos is known for. The World Economic Forum has held its Annual Meeting here since 1971, five days in the third full week of the month when roughly 3,000 heads of state, chief executives and civil-society figures work through a single purpose-built congress centre. The scale mismatch is total: a town smaller than many city neighborhoods effectively absorbs a meeting of global political and business leadership, along with the security personnel, press corps and support staff that come with it, and then returns to an ordinary ski season within days of the delegates leaving.

01When Davos 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.

Jan World Economic Forum Annual Meeting

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

World Economic Forum Annual Meeting · Jan

Cairn on Büelenhorn (Davos, Grison, Switzerland)

Klosters Parsenn, Klosters, Switzerland, Davos

Exterior of the Berghotel Schatzalp, Davos

02The calendar here

Coming up

18 Jan → Jan 22, 2027

Davos · Switzerland · Business & Finance World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 57th Annual Meeting · January 18–22, 2027 · 57th Annual Meeting Confirmed

Major

Every event on the calendar

Professor Klaus Schwab attends the 20th Anniversary Schwab Foundation Gala Dinner in New York, NY USA. Copyright by World, World Economic Forum Annual Meeting

Business & Finance World Economic Forum Annual Meeting Jan 18–22, 2027

Subscribe to this destination’s calendar (ICS) · Open in the calendar

03Why it matters

Davos in January is the closest the international business and policy calendar comes to a single fixed convening point across governments, companies and civil society at once, and the Forum's own agenda is only part of why it has held that position for over five decades. In our reading, the choice of a small, easily secured Alpine town reachable by a couple of roads and a single-track railway is now as load-bearing to the event's character as anything on its programme: Davos can be sealed off in a way that no capital city could be, and that logistical fact has shaped the meeting as much as its founder's original ambitions for it.

04The year, month by month

JanuaryThe World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting takes over the Congress Centre and much of the town for five days in the third full week of the month, the year's defining week by a wide margin.

FebruaryOrdinary high-season skiing continues on the Parsenn and Jakobshorn slopes, without the disruption or crowds of January's Forum.

MarchSki season continues into its later, often sunniest weeks, with the resort at its regular winter pace.

AprilThe ski season closes toward the end of the month as the snowpack retreats; a quiet shoulder period follows.

MayThe quietest month of the year, between the end of skiing and the start of the summer hiking season, with many hotels closed.

JuneHiking and mountain-biking trails reopen as the snow clears from the higher routes, drawing a much smaller and more local summer visitor base.

JulyHigh summer brings walkers and cyclists to the surrounding valleys, a markedly different and quieter register than the January meeting.

AugustSummer tourism continues at a modest pace, with the town's alpine setting rather than any fixed event the main draw.

SeptemberA quiet early-autumn month as the summer hiking season winds down.

OctoberA shoulder month between summer and winter, with many hotels closed for the changeover.

NovemberSnowmaking and preparation for the ski season pick up through the month ahead of December's opening.

DecemberThe Spengler Cup, one of the world's oldest invitational ice hockey tournaments, is played in Davos between Christmas and New Year, and the ski season reopens around the same time.

05Weather by month

Source: Wikipedia climate table for Davos (station elevation 1,594 m, 1991-2020 normals). Long-term averages; a given week can differ.
Month	High °C	Low °C	Rain mm
January	0.0	-4.7	70.1
February	1.2	-4.2	52.0
March	4.6	-0.7	56.7
April	8.3	3.0	54.4
May	12.8	7.4	88.7
June	16.5	11.0	128.7
July	18.5	12.8	133.1
August	18.2	12.6	149.5
September	14.2	8.7	96.3
October	10.8	5.1	77.1
November	4.8	0.0	71.2
December	0.6	-3.6	68.1

06Getting there and around

AirportsZurich (ZRH) · 148 km · commercial — the gateway most Forum attendees use despite the distance, valued over the closer regional field for its reliability.Samedan (St. Moritz) (SMV) · 65 km · commercial — a small, high-altitude regional airport, among the highest in Europe, used for business aviation but limited by weather and runway length.

Private aviationSamedan Airport near St. Moritz is the closest field with business-aviation facilities, but its altitude and weather exposure push much of the World Economic Forum's private-jet traffic to Zurich instead, roughly double the distance; some flights also route through Geneva or Friedrichshafen in Germany.

HelicopterA helipad at Davos-Wolfgang handles charter transfers during the Forum, most commonly a roughly thirty-minute flight from Zurich, with passengers clearing customs and immigration before boarding.

Getting aroundThe Rhaetian Railway's narrow-gauge line serves Davos Platz and Davos Dorf stations, connecting toward Landquart and Chur in one direction and, via Filisur, toward St. Moritz and the Bernina and Glacier Express routes in the other. Davos has no direct motorway access; road and rail approaches are both subject to extra security control during the Forum.

07Where things are

Neighborhoods

Davos Platzthe larger southern village, home to the Congress Centre and most hotels.

Davos Dorfthe smaller, quieter northern village, connected to Platz by a lakeside promenade.

Hotel areas

Hotels concentrate around Davos Platz's promenade near the Congress Centre, the address used by most Forum delegates; the town's total room count is small relative to the size of the January meeting, and additional delegates and staff are housed as far away as Klosters and Chur.

Dining districts

The Promenade through Davos Platz holds most of the town's restaurants; this is a small alpine resort rather than a city with distinct dining quarters.

Cultural institutions

Kirchner Museum Davosdevoted to the German Expressionist painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, who lived in Davos from 1917 until his death in 1938.

Davos Congress Centrethe purpose-built venue for the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting.

Shopping

A modest resort high street along the Promenade carries ski and outdoor equipment alongside general tourist retail; Davos has no significant luxury shopping district of its own.

08How the place changes

Davos runs an ordinary two-season Alpine resort calendar, ski season in winter and hiking in summer, interrupted once a year by a single week in January when the World Economic Forum temporarily overwhelms the town's own scale entirely.

09History

Davos's modern history begins with tuberculosis medicine: nineteenth-century physicians identified its dry, high-altitude air as beneficial to respiratory patients, and a sanatorium economy grew up around that claim, memorialized in Thomas Mann's 1924 novel The Magic Mountain, written after his wife's own stay at a Davos sanatorium. Antibiotics made that medical model obsolete by the mid-twentieth century, and the town redirected its hotel infrastructure toward skiing instead. Klaus Schwab founded the European Management Forum in Davos in 1971, renaming it the World Economic Forum in 1987; over five decades it grew from a management conference into the fixed January meeting point for a much wider international audience, and is now the fact about Davos most people outside Switzerland know first.