★ Gstaad Menuhin Festival

01Why it matters

It is one of the oldest summer music festivals in Switzerland and it exists because a tourist office asked a violinist to fill the empty months. Menuhin, who lived at Saanen, agreed, and the result is the model that Alpine resorts have followed since: a summer cultural programme that justifies a mountain village keeping its hotels open past the ski season. In our reading its significance now is as much civic as musical. Gstaad's winter identity is famous and its summer one is not, and the festival is the single largest reason the Saanenland has a July and August at all. The programme itself has held its standing - the artists who appear here appear at Lucerne and Salzburg in the same season - and the 2026 edition marked seventy years.

02The week around it

There is no single festival week, which changes how the destination behaves. Instead the Saanenland runs a long, even summer: hiking and cycling on the Wispile, Eggli, Rellerli and Hornberg, the Saanen and Gstaad markets, the mountain restaurants, and a concert on most evenings somewhere between Rougemont and Gsteig. The village promenade is busy without being crowded, and the pace is slower than in any winter week. Two points in the calendar concentrate things: the third weekend of August, when the Hublot Polo Gold Cup takes over the Saanen airfield and the village fills; and the closing days at the start of September, when the festival's largest orchestral concerts are programmed. Almost everything about the Saanenland in summer is public - the trails, the villages, the churches between concerts, the MOB railway line down to Montreux - and the festival's own free and open events, including academy sessions, extend that.

03When to arrive

Pick a long weekend rather than a week, and choose it by programme. Thursday to Sunday gives two or three concerts, a full day on the mountain and a market morning. Anyone attending the symphonic programme should look at the end of August and the first days of September, which carry the largest events and the best weather for the walk back to a hotel afterward.

04Where to stay

Gstaad village, along the promenade, is the shortest walk to the festival tent and the Cine Theatre; the Gstaad Palace above the village and the Alpina on its shoulder are the landmarks. Saanen, five minutes down the valley, puts you beside the church that is the festival's oldest venue and is quieter and cheaper. Schonried, Saanenmoser and Gsteig are the mountain villages on the MOB line, all workable for evening concerts. Rougemont, across the language border in the Vaud, is ten minutes away and has its own church and its own character. Because the festival is spread across the valley, staying anywhere on the railway works.

05Access and hospitality

Tickets are sold by the festival through its own online shop and by telephone, concert by concert, with the tent's symphonic evenings and the best-known soloists closing first. The academy's master courses are open to participants by application and some sessions are open to listeners. There is no commercial hospitality tier and nothing invitation-only is published; the festival's supporter structures fund the academy rather than provide entertaining.

06Where the social activity happens

The Gstaad promenade and its terraces before and after concerts, the Gstaad Palace bar and Grand Hall, the restaurants at Saanen, and the interval crowd outside the church and the tent, which in fine weather stands on the grass. During the day, the mountain restaurants above Wispile and Eggli and the lake at Lauenen. The festival's audience overlaps heavily with the Saanenland's summer chalet community, and the two are indistinguishable on a terrace.

07Getting there

08Practicalities

09History

Yehudi Menuhin had a house in the Saanenland and was asked by local tourism officials to add some concerts to the summer season. The first festival was held in 1957 in the church at Saanen, and Menuhin directed it for decades. It grew from a handful of chamber concerts into a seven-week programme with a symphonic strand, adding the festival tent to hold audiences the church could not, and an academy to give the festival a teaching function. The festival awards the Olivier Berggruen Prize annually. Its roster over the years has included many of the era's leading soloists, and its identity has stayed closer to Menuhin's original chamber-music conception than the size of the modern programme would suggest.

10Who is there

Swiss and German classical audiences, many of them long-standing subscribers; the Saanenland's summer residents and chalet owners; academy participants and their teachers and families; international visitors who follow the summer festival circuit between Verbier, Gstaad, Lucerne and Salzburg; and day visitors from the Vaud and the Bernese Oberland.