Epic Pass launch price hits new high for 2025-26 season
Launch price for passes now on sale is still cheaper than final price of 2020-21 season
Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily
Vail Resorts launched its 2025-26 Epic Pass on Tuesday at $1,051, a 7% jump over last year’s launch price of $982. The Epic Pass is Vail Resorts’ premium pass product, offering unlimited access to all of the company’s ski areas.
The Epic Local Pass, offering 10 days at Vail or Beaver Creek, also launched at a 7% increase over last season on Tuesday and is now on sale for $783. The Epic Day Pass for seven days at Vail (peak days not included) is now $694 or $100 per day, which is also a 7% increase over last season.
Epic Day passes are offered for one to seven days, peak or non-peak, with the price-per-day decreasing depending on the number of days purchased. An Epic Day Pass with peak days, for one single day at Vail Resorts’ premium resorts including Vail Mountain, is now $139.
In a press release issued Tuesday announcing the launch of the Epic Pass, Vail Resorts said 75% of visitation to the company’s mountains in 2024-25 has been from guests with a pre-purchased ski pass.
Including Epic, Epic Local and Epic Day passes, Vail Resorts sold an estimated 2.3 million passes for the 2024-25 season.
“More guests are choosing Passes over lift tickets, in part, thanks to the Epic Day Pass, which allows skiers and riders to build their own Pass, choosing the numbers of days, resort access and whether to include peak dates, from $47-$100 per day,” Vail Resorts said in the announcement. “Epic Day Passes provide up to 65% savings compared to lift ticket prices.”
Epicpass.com was directing purchasers into an online waiting room following Tuesday’s launch announcement, alerting guests when the website was ready to accept their purchases with a chime notification. Once that notification was received, customers were given 20 minutes to make a purchase.
“We understand that waiting can be frustrating, especially on our busiest days, so we’ve created this online waiting room to help manage the flow of visitors more smoothly,” Vail Resorts told guests in the notification.
New for 2025-26, Vail Resorts has partnered with Verbier 4 Vallées in Switzerland to expand access to that resort, which is the largest in Switzerland. Epic Pass holders will have access to five days of consecutive, unrestricted access to Verbier 4 Vallées, and Epic Local pass holders will have some restricted dates.
In the release, Vail Resorts said the Verbier partnership will provide a strategic opportunity for the company, due to the fact that Verbier is “accessible by train or car from Vail Resorts recently acquired Swiss resorts, Crans-Montana Mountain Resort and Andermatt-Sedrun.”
Laurent Vaucher, chief executive Officer at Verbier, said Verbier is honored to be a part of the Epic Pass, which puts it “in the company of some of the greatest mountain resorts in the world.”
“We look forward to welcoming guests to Verbier next winter season to experience the exhilarating slopes from La Pasay in Bruson to the Mont-Fort piste,” Vaucher said.
It’s not the first time Epic Pass users have had access to Verbier. In the 2016-17 season, Vail Resorts launched its Epic Pass at $809, which was, at the time, at 5% increase of the previous season’s $769 Epic Pass. The addition of access to Verbier, along with other resorts in Austria, France and Italy was touted as a selling point.
Vail Resorts continued to increase pass prices annually until the 2021-22 season when the company performed what it called an “Epic for everyone” reduction of pass prices, dropping the Epic Pass price 16% to $819. For the 2020-21 season, the Epic Pass launched at $979.
While Tuesday’s $1,051 Epic Pass represents the highest launch point yet for the company, it is still cheaper than the final selling point of the Epic Pass prior to the reset. In December of 2020-21, before pass sales were cut off for the season, the Epic Pass was selling for $1,099.
