Polo on snow: St. Moritz and the winter event circuit.

10:30 on a January Friday, and the lake takes the first hoofbeats of the day. The snow on the pitch has been rolled flat and dyed with faint boundary lines; beyond it the ice goes on, white and slightly blue, until the far shore. A pony blows steam. The ball, orange, is dropped in and gone, and the sound of the game is nothing like grass: a dry crunch, then silence, then the crunch again. On the terraces along the boards people hold their glasses with gloves on and do not sit down.

Where to stay for the Snow Polo World Cup St. Moritz comes down to three addresses and how close you want to be to the ice: Badrutt's Palace on Via Serlas for the centre of the evening, Kulm Hotel St. Moritz for the town's oldest rooms and a 2,000 square metre spa, Suvretta House on the Chasellas plateau for quiet and mountain access ten minutes from the station. The 2026 tournament runs 23 to 25 January on the Frozen Lake St. Moritz, with play from 10:30 to 16:30 each day. White Turf follows on three February Sundays, which means the Engadine is effectively booked out across six weeks.

What happens on the frozen lake in St. Moritz this winter?

Three fixtures share the same sheet of ice and the same six weeks. The season opened with the IBSF European Championships in bobsleigh, 9 to 11 January 2026, on the St. Moritz-Celerina Olympic Bobrun, the natural track rebuilt by hand every winter. The Snow Polo World Cup St. Moritz follows, 23 to 25 January 2026, with play from 10:30 to 16:30 each day. Then White Turf, the horse racing meeting, takes the three Sundays of 8, 15 and 22 February 2026, with Family Days on the Saturdays before. The official St. Moritz Tourism calendar carries the confirmed programme.

What makes the polo strange and good is the surface. Ponies are shod for grip, the ball is bigger and brighter than the one used on grass, and the game is shortened because the effort at this altitude is hard on the animals. The pitch sits on the lake itself, which means the whole thing is temporary in a way no permanent ground ever is: for eleven months of the year this is water. First played here in 1985, organised since 2015 as the Snow Polo World Cup St. Moritz by the Evviva Polo St. Moritz Polo Club, the 2026 edition is the forty-first.

Cartier has backed a team since the 1985 origins, one of the house's rare sponsorships, and the final on Sunday afternoon is the social centre of the Engadine winter. February belongs to the horses. White Turf draws more than 35,000 people across its three Sundays, and the discipline nobody forgets is skijoring: a rider on skis towed at full gallop behind a thoroughbred with no jockey aboard, hanging onto reins and nothing else. It is loud, close and faintly alarming to watch. The race programme sits on the official White Turf site.

Where to stay for the Snow Polo World Cup St. Moritz?

Three hotels answer the question, and the choice is really about distance from the evening. Badrutt's Palace Hotel on Via Serlas, open since 1896, 112 rooms, a member of the Leading Hotels of the World, sits at the centre of everything: you walk out of the door and you are among the people you came to see. For the polo weekend that is either the point or the problem, depending on temperament. Ask for rooms on the lake side, high up, where the window frames the pitch and you can watch the grooms walking ponies out before breakfast.

Kulm Hotel St. Moritz is the town's original address, described by St. Moritz Tourism as the oldest hotel here and the building where Switzerland's first electric light was switched on. It is five star superior, a short walk down to the lake, and it has the one thing that matters after six hours standing on ice: a 2,000 square metre spa. Come up from the lake at half past four, blue in the face, and go straight into the water. The Kulm's park and terrace catch the last of the afternoon sun, which in this valley is a currency of its own.

Suvretta House is the other temperament entirely. It stands alone on the Chasellas plateau, ten minutes from St. Moritz station, five star superior, with a winter season that runs from early December to early April. No passing traffic, no shop windows, nothing but the valley below and the forest behind. You drive down for the polo and back up for dinner, and the quiet on the return is worth the few minutes. Families tend to settle here for a week; the hall with its fires lit at six in the evening is one of the real pleasures of Alpine travel, and nobody hurries you out of it.

A practical word. Rooms for the polo weekend and the White Turf Sundays go a long way ahead, and the best suites move by repeat booking rather than by enquiry. If you are deciding in November for January, the honest answer is that availability, not preference, will choose for you. Private chalets with staff exist across the Suvretta side and are placed quietly, by introduction; they are worth asking about early, with the caveat that the good ones never reach a public list.

What do you wear to watch polo on a frozen lake?

Boots first, and flat. You stand on ice for most of the day, often on packed snow that has gone glassy by midday, and the single most common mistake on the lake front is a heel. Fur, shearling or a properly serious down layer over cashmere; the temperature on the ice at ten in the morning is not the temperature in Via Serlas at four. Dark glasses are not a style choice here. The glare off a frozen lake under January sun is severe and it will give you a headache by the second chukka if you ignore it.

The look on the terraces is Alpine rather than fashionable: good coats, old coats, hats that have seen several seasons, gloves you can actually hold a glass in. Nobody is trying hard. The people who have been coming for thirty years are the ones in the most anonymous clothes, and they are standing closest to the boards. Children are dressed as if for a day on the mountain, because that is what it is.

Evenings change register completely. Dinners and the gala nights around the polo weekend run to black tie or near it, and the hotels fill with a formality that has not shifted much in sixty years. Pack the dinner jacket, pack one dress that survives being worn twice, and pack a second pair of shoes for walking between hotels on a street that is ice from December to March. That last line sounds dull and it is the one you will thank us for.

Where to eat around St. Moritz during event season?

St. Moritz holds a concentration of serious kitchens unusual for a town of its size. The MICHELIN Guide lists two restaurants at two stars here, Da Vittorio - St. Moritz and Ecco St. Moritz, with Talvo at one star behind them. Da Vittorio books out for the polo weekend early, so the table is arranged when the rooms are. Ecco is the quieter, more precise room of the two. Talvo is the one locals send you to when they want you to have a proper evening rather than a visible one.

At the Kulm, the Country Club runs under Mauro Colagreco, and it is the best lunch you can take in town without first going up the mountain. At Suvretta House, the Grand Restaurant keeps the formal dinner tradition that has largely disappeared from the Alps: jackets, a room full of regulars, candles, an evening that takes its time rather than turning tables. Both are MICHELIN Guide addresses, and both reward the guest who books a week ahead instead of on the afternoon.

Lunch belongs on the mountain. Chasellas, at 1,936 metres, is the Suvretta House house on the slope, the sort of place where an hour in the sun resets the whole day. Higher again, Trutz sits at 2,211 metres with the valley laid out in front of it, and it is the address to ask about for a group, since the view does half the hosting. Have the hotel arrange both when you confirm the rooms, not after you arrive: during polo week the mountain tables go the way the lake-side ones do.

The Atljet Edit

Five choices from the editors for the January to February window, each one worth building a day around.

• The Cartier chukka, Snow Polo World Cup St. Moritz: the house has backed a team here since 1985, and Sunday's final is where the Engadine season actually happens.
• A White Turf Sunday, Frozen Lake St. Moritz: 8, 15 or 22 February 2026, and the skijoring is unlike anything else run on ice in Europe.
• Trutz, 2,211 metres: the high lunch above the Suvretta plateau, with the whole valley in front of the terrace.
• Grand Restaurant, Suvretta House: a MICHELIN Guide address and a dining room that still dresses for dinner.
• Kulm Hotel St. Moritz: the town's oldest house and a 2,000 square metre spa, which is exactly what six hours on a frozen lake requires.

How do you fly in for the St. Moritz winter season?

Samedan (SMV) is five kilometres from St. Moritz, and that is the whole argument for it. It sits at 1,707 metres, the second highest airport of its kind in Europe after Courchevel, and it behaves like a mountain airfield: daylight, good weather, the right aircraft and an operator cleared to use it. Not every jet goes there, so for once the aircraft is chosen around the airport rather than the other way round. What that means for luggage, timings and winter days is set out in flying privately into Samedan.

Zurich (ZRH) is the alternative and the fallback: all weather, all hours, then a drive up the valley or a short hop onward to Samedan by jet or helicopter. During polo week and the White Turf Sundays, handling and parking at Samedan fill early and arrival times are allocated well in advance. The practical consequence is simple. A decision taken in December leaves you with choices. A decision taken ten days out leaves you Zurich and a car. Our flight desk books both ends together for exactly this reason.

The pattern in those numbers is the one we repeat in every piece on Alpine flying: you pay for time, not for distance. Geneva to Samedan is 167 nm (309 km) and 45 minutes in a Light Jet; London Farnborough to Samedan is 538 nm (996 km) and 101 minutes in the same aircraft, a little over twice the time for more than three times the distance. If you want the reasoning behind choosing one class over another, we set it out in light vs midsize vs heavy jet, and the winter Alpine routes specifically in London to the Alps by private jet.

Half past four on the Sunday, and the light has gone off the lake. The grooms are leading ponies back across the ice in a long line, rugs on, breath visible, and the terraces are emptying towards the hotels and the hot water. The pitch lines are still there, faint under the churned snow, and they will stay until the thaw takes the whole thing back to water in April. You walk up Via Serlas with cold hands, and you already know you will be here next January, standing in the same place at the same hour.