Ski pass blackout dates for 2026/27 fall on the same holiday weekends almost everywhere: Christmas to New Year (26–30 or 31 December), Martin Luther King Jr. weekend (16–17 January) and Presidents’ Day weekend (13–14 February), plus Thanksgiving weekend on Epic’s restricted tiers. The full Epic and Ikon passes have none. The cheaper tiers do, and three Ikon resorts also require reservations.
Blackout dates are the price of a cheaper pass, and most people only discover them at the turnstile, when the scanner turns red on 27 December. The rules are not complicated once they’re laid out in one place, but no operator lays them out in one place. Epic lists its restricted dates on each pass page. Ikon publishes one set of dates and then flags, resort by resort, where they apply. This guide pulls all of it together for 2026/27, explains the restrictions that aren’t called blackout dates but behave like them, and ends with the honest question of whether a restricted pass suits your calendar. For the wider choice of pass, start with our guide to the best ski pass for 2026/27.
Every date here was checked on the operators’ own sites on 1 October 2026.
What are ski pass blackout dates?
Blackout dates are days when a pass doesn’t work at some or all of its resorts, almost always the busiest holiday dates. They let operators price the cheaper tiers well below the full pass while protecting their most crowded days. Epic calls them restricted peak dates; Ikon calls them blackout dates. They mean the same thing.
They are one of four kinds of restriction that decide whether a pass works on the day you want to ski:
- Blackout or peak dates. Fixed days on which the pass is not valid, usually Christmas week and the big holiday weekends.
- Day limits. A set number of days at a resort, such as five days on Ikon Base or ten days combined at Vail, Beaver Creek and Whistler on Epic Local. Once they’re used, they’re gone.
- Reservations. At a few resorts you must book a lift reservation in advance, even with a valid pass.
- Access windows and exclusions. Some partner resorts accept a pass only between certain dates, or exclude a particular lift.
A pass can be “unlimited” at a resort and still be subject to the first, third and fourth. Read all four before you buy.
The 2026/27 blackout calendar at a glance
| Pass | Thanksgiving weekend | Christmas–New Year | MLK weekend | Presidents’ Day weekend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Epic Pass | None | None | None | None |
| Epic Local | 27–28 Nov | 26–31 Dec | 16 Jan only | 13–14 Feb |
| Epic Northeast Value | 27–28 Nov | 26–31 Dec | 16–17 Jan | 13–14 Feb |
| Ikon Pass | None | None | None | None |
| Ikon Base | None | 26–30 Dec | 16–17 Jan | 13–14 Feb |
| Ikon Session | None | 26–30 Dec | 16–17 Jan | 13–14 Feb |
| Colorado Ski Country kids’ passport | None | 25 Dec–1 Jan | 16–17 Jan | 13–14 Feb |
| Mountain Collective | No blackout dates | |||
| Indy+ | No blackout dates |
Three things in that table are easy to miss.
First, the dates only apply at some resorts. Epic Local’s restricted dates bite only where its access “excludes peak dates”; at Breckenridge, Keystone and Crested Butte, Local works every day of the season. Ikon Base’s blackouts apply at most of its North American destinations but not all. The sections below list which.
Second, the holiday Mondays are not on any of these lists. MLK Day falls on Monday 18 January 2027 and Presidents’ Day on Monday 15 February; every restricted pass above blocks the weekend, not the Monday. Epic Local doesn’t even block Sunday 17 January.
Third, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are open on Ikon Base. Its Christmas blackout runs 26–30 December. Epic Local’s runs to 31 December, so 1 January is open there. Open does not mean quiet. Those are some of the busiest days of the season, so expect crowds.
The restricted days, one by one
Laid out day by day, the 2026/27 calendar has more open days around the holidays than most people assume. “Restricted” applies only at the resorts where that tier excludes peak dates; “open” means the date isn’t on the tier’s list, though day limits and reservations still apply.
| Date | Day | Epic Local | Epic Northeast Value | Ikon Base and Session |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Nov 2026 (Thanksgiving) | Thursday | Open | Open | Open |
| 27–28 Nov 2026 | Friday–Saturday | Restricted | Restricted | Open |
| 25 Dec 2026 (Christmas Day) | Friday | Open | Open | Open |
| 26–30 Dec 2026 | Saturday–Wednesday | Restricted | Restricted | Blacked out |
| 31 Dec 2026 | Thursday | Restricted | Restricted | Open |
| 1 Jan 2027 | Friday | Open | Open | Open |
| 16 Jan 2027 | Saturday | Restricted | Restricted | Blacked out |
| 17 Jan 2027 | Sunday | Open | Restricted | Blacked out |
| 18 Jan 2027 (MLK Day) | Monday | Open | Open | Open |
| 13–14 Feb 2027 | Saturday–Sunday | Restricted | Restricted | Blacked out |
| 15 Feb 2027 (Presidents’ Day) | Monday | Open | Open | Open |
Christmas Day itself is open on both of the big companies’ restricted tiers, and so is the first day of the new year. If your family can ski on the 25th and the 1st, a restricted pass covers more of the holiday than its reputation suggests.
Does the Epic Pass have blackout dates?
The full Epic Pass doesn’t: it is unlimited every day of the season, peak dates included, at its 42 unlimited resorts. Epic Local and the regional passes do. Epic Local restricts 27–28 November, 26–31 December, 16 January and 13–14 February at the resorts where its access excludes peak dates.
Which resorts those are matters more than the dates. On Epic Local for 2026/27:
| Epic Local access | Resorts | Peak dates apply? |
|---|---|---|
| Unlimited, every day | Breckenridge, Keystone, Crested Butte, Stevens Pass; Okemo, Mount Snow, Hunter and the New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Midwest resorts | No |
| Unlimited, excluding peak dates | Park City, Heavenly, Northstar, Kirkwood, Stowe | Yes |
| 10 days combined, excluding peak dates | Vail, Beaver Creek, Whistler Blackcomb | Yes |
| 5 consecutive days, excluding peak dates | Verbier 4 Vallées, Switzerland | Yes, plus an extra restricted period from 6 to 20 February 2027 |
So an Epic Local holder can ski Breckenridge on 27 December but not Park City, and can’t use any of the ten Vail–Beaver Creek–Whistler days that day either. For a family whose only possible week is Christmas, Local is a Breckenridge-and-Keystone pass. Whether that’s enough is a question of geography, not price.
The Northeast Value Pass applies its peak dates at Okemo, Mount Snow and Hunter, and caps Stowe at ten days outside them. Its New Hampshire and Pennsylvania resorts stay open through every holiday. The Midweek Pass is weekdays only, with the same peak exclusions at those four mountains. Our best ski pass for East Coast skiers guide covers the Eastern products in full.
Does the Epic Pass need reservations?
Not for lifts, on anything Epic’s 2026/27 pass pages say. The reservations Epic talks about this season are parking reservations at select resorts, booked through the My Epic app. Two partner-resort quirks are worth knowing: Telluride, where the Epic Pass includes seven days, requires a physical pass card because Mobile Pass doesn’t work there, and Hakuba Valley and Rusutsu in Japan give five consecutive days each rather than five days to spread out. The details are in our Epic Pass explainer.
Does Ikon Base have blackout dates?
Yes, at most of its North American destinations: 26–30 December 2026, 16–17 January 2027 and 13–14 February 2027. The full Ikon Pass has none. Palisades Tahoe, Mammoth, Steamboat, Big Sky and Killington are blacked out on Base; Arapahoe Basin, Copper, Winter Park, Solitude and Snowshoe are not.
Ikon doesn’t publish that split as a list. It marks each destination with a blackout icon on its pass comparison page, and the pattern is worth knowing before you plan a holiday on Base:
| Region | Blacked out on Ikon Base over the holidays | Open on Ikon Base over the holidays |
|---|---|---|
| Colorado | Steamboat, Aspen Snowmass (Snowmass) | Arapahoe Basin, Copper, Winter Park, Eldora |
| Utah | Snowbird, Brighton | Solitude |
| California | Palisades Tahoe, Mammoth, June, Sierra-at-Tahoe | Big Bear, Snow Valley |
| Pacific Northwest and Rockies | Crystal, Mt. Bachelor, Summit at Snoqualmie, Schweitzer, Big Sky, Taos | Alyeska (Alaska) |
| East and Midwest | Stratton, Sugarbush, Killington-Pico, Loon, Sunday River, Sugarloaf, Camelback, Blue Mountain (PA), Boyne, The Highlands, Snowriver, Lutsen, Granite Peak | Snowshoe |
| Canada | Revelstoke, SkiBig3, Sun Peaks, Panorama, RED, Cypress, SilverStar, Le Massif | Tremblant, Blue Mountain (ON) |
Deer Valley, Jackson Hole, Snowbasin, Sun Valley and Alta aren’t on Ikon Base at all, so the question doesn’t arise; they’re full-pass destinations.
The practical upshot is a Christmas strategy. An Ikon Base holder in Denver can ski A-Basin, Copper, Winter Park and Eldora straight through the holidays, which covers a good share of the Front Range day-trip map. A Base holder whose heart is set on Steamboat or Palisades between Christmas and New Year needs the full Ikon Pass or day tickets. In the East, Snowshoe, Tremblant and Blue Mountain in Ontario are the only Base destinations open over the holidays. Our Ikon Pass explainer goes through the tiers in detail.
Which ski resorts require reservations in 2026/27?
On Ikon, three: Jackson Hole, Deer Valley and Loon Mountain. Jackson Hole and Deer Valley are full-pass destinations, while Loon requires reservations on every Ikon product. Epic’s pass pages mention no lift reservation requirement this season, only parking reservations at some resorts.
Ikon’s own wording is that reservations “may be required at certain Ikon Pass destinations” and are decided by each destination “based on circumstances at the time”, so the list can change during a season. For 2026/27, it names those three. Two practical consequences follow.
- Book holiday reservations the day you buy the pass. A reservation system exists because demand exceeds capacity on some days, and those are the days everyone wants. The full Ikon Pass includes priority reservations; Base and Session don’t.
- A reservation is not a substitute for days. At Jackson Hole and Deer Valley the full Ikon Pass gives seven days each, and every reserved day still counts against that allotment.
Deer Valley also caps its daily skier numbers, independent of any pass, and it is skiers-only, so a snowboarding family member can’t ride it on any pass at all.
Day limits and access windows: the restrictions nobody calls blackouts
These don’t appear on any blackout list, but they decide whether a pass works on a given day just as firmly.
Shared allotments. On the full Ikon Pass, Alta and Snowbird share one allotment of seven days between them, not seven each. The four Aspen Snowmass mountains share seven days too, and Ikon Base reaches only Snowmass, for five. Killington and Pico share their days. On Epic Local, the ten days at Vail, Beaver Creek and Whistler Blackcomb are a combined total across all three.
Lift exclusions. Ikon’s access at Big Sky does not include the tram.
Access windows at international partners. On Ikon, Dolomiti Superski access runs from 15 November to 15 April, Zermatt from 1 November to 30 April, and Italy’s Valle d’Aosta resorts from 1 November 2026 to 31 May 2027. On Epic Local, Verbier 4 Vallées gives five consecutive days, outside peak dates and outside an extra restricted window from 6 to 20 February 2027.
Consecutive-day rules. Epic’s Japanese partners, Hakuba Valley and Rusutsu, give five consecutive days each. They run back to back, so plan the trip around them.
Kids’ passports. The Colorado Ski Country passport for grades K–6 has its own blackouts (25 December to 1 January, 16–17 January and 13–14 February), and they’re longer over Christmas than either big pass’s. Our best ski pass for families guide covers the children’s programs.
How can I check whether my pass works on a given day?
Check three things: the resort access list for your tier, its restricted dates, and whether the resort requires a reservation. Epic lists access and restricted dates on each pass page; Ikon flags blackouts and reservations resort by resort on its comparison page, and its account pages show your own pass’s access details.
In practice, run through it in this order before you book anything non-refundable:
- Find your tier, not your brand. “I have Ikon” tells you nothing; Ikon Base and the full Ikon Pass treat the same mountain differently.
- Find the resort on that tier’s access list and note whether it’s unlimited, limited to a number of days, or unlimited excluding peak dates.
- Check the date against the tier’s restricted list, and check the day of the week. Holiday Mondays are open on every list above; the weekends before them usually aren’t.
- Count your remaining days at any limited resort, and remember the shared allotments, such as Alta and Snowbird on the full Ikon Pass.
- Check for a reservation requirement and, for international partners, an access window.
It takes five minutes, and it’s the difference between a planned holiday and a $289 walk-up ticket at Jackson Hole over Christmas and New Year.
Is a pass with blackout dates worth it?
For most skiers, yes. The restricted tiers save $296 on Epic and $430 on Ikon, and the blocked days are a handful of holiday dates most people don’t ski anyway. It is the wrong buy only if your ski days are tied to school holidays, because those are exactly the dates it removes.
Put a number on what you’re giving up. Ikon Base blacks out nine days: five over Christmas and two each over MLK and Presidents’ Day weekends. The full Ikon Pass costs $430 more than Base, so if holiday access were the only difference you’d be paying about $48 for each of those days. Epic Local restricts eleven days against the full Epic Pass’s $296 premium, about $27 a day. (Both upgrades buy other things too: more destinations, more days at the limited resorts, priority reservations on Ikon. Holiday access is simply the piece that matters most to families.)
Here is how the decision usually breaks down:
- You ski weekends and the odd weekday, and travel outside school holidays: buy the restricted tier and pocket the difference. The blackouts will never touch you.
- Your only ski week is Christmas, MLK or Presidents’ Day: you need the full pass, or a restricted pass plus a plan that keeps you at resorts it doesn’t restrict (Breckenridge and Keystone on Epic Local; A-Basin, Copper and Winter Park on Ikon Base).
- You ski four or five days a year, all of them over the holidays: buy advance day tickets instead of any pass. On a blackout date a pass holder is just another day-ticket customer.
- A short trip outside the holidays: the Ikon Session Pass, from $299 for two to four days, carries the same three blackout periods as Base, but costs a fraction of a season pass.
For the price side of the same decision, our guide on when to buy a ski pass sets out the 2026/27 deadlines, and the head-to-head is in Epic Pass vs Ikon Pass.
The other passes: Mountain Collective, Indy and Session
Mountain Collective has no blackout dates. It gives two days at each of its destinations, so the limit is the day count, not the calendar. Our Mountain Collective guide covers it.
Indy Pass splits the difference: Indy+ has no blackout dates, while the cheaper Indy Base tier carries them. Its 2026/27 sale closed on 11 September, so this matters now mainly to people who already hold one, or who are planning for next year. See our Indy Pass guide.
Ikon Session, the two-, three- or four-day product, shares Ikon Base’s three blackout periods.
The rule across all of them is the same: the cheaper the product, the more likely it is to exclude the holidays. Once you know that, the dates stop being a surprise. For the rest of the pass decision, from prices to the regional products, go back to the complete ski pass guide.
Frequently asked questions
Are there blackout dates on the Ikon Pass?
Not on the full Ikon Pass, which has no blackout dates for 2026/27. Ikon Base and Ikon Session are blacked out on 26–30 December 2026, 16–17 January 2027 and 13–14 February 2027, at most North American destinations but not all of them.
Can I ski on New Year’s Day with an Ikon Base Pass?
Yes. Ikon Base’s Christmas blackout runs from 26 to 30 December 2026, so 31 December and 1 January are not blacked out. Expect them to be among the busiest days of the season, and check whether your destination requires a reservation.
Does Epic Local work on Presidents’ Day?
Yes, on the Monday. Epic Local’s restricted dates are Saturday and Sunday, 13–14 February 2027, so Presidents’ Day itself, Monday 15 February, is not restricted. At Breckenridge, Keystone and Crested Butte, Epic Local works on every day of the weekend too.
Which resorts need reservations with the Ikon Pass?
For 2026/27, Ikon names three: Jackson Hole, Deer Valley and Loon Mountain. Ikon says each destination decides based on circumstances at the time, so the list can change. Full Ikon Pass holders get priority reservations.
Do I need a reservation to use my Epic Pass?
Not for lifts, according to Epic’s 2026/27 pass pages. Some Vail Resorts mountains offer parking reservations through the My Epic app, and Telluride requires a physical pass card rather than Mobile Pass.
Do blackout dates apply to children’s passes?
A child’s pass follows the rules of its tier, so a child Epic Local or Ikon Base pass has the same restrictions as the adult version. The Colorado Ski Country kids’ passport has its own blackout dates: 25 December to 1 January, 16–17 January and 13–14 February.
What happens if I try to ski on a blackout date?
Your pass won’t scan at a resort where the date is blacked out, so you’d need a lift ticket for that day. Buy it online in advance, because holiday window prices are the highest of the season.
Sources
- Ikon Base Pass — 2026/27 blackout dates and reservations
- Ikon Pass — compare 2026/27 passes
- Epic Local Pass — access and restricted peak dates
- Epic Northeast Value Pass
- Colorado Ski Country USA — Ski Passport
- Mountain Collective
- Indy Pass
Image credits
| Image | Photographer | Licence | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Loon Mountain base area, New Hampshire (featured image) | chensiyuan | CC BY-SA 4.0 | Commons |
| The Village at Mammoth at dusk | Nandaro | CC BY-SA 3.0 | Commons_02.JPG) |
| Stowe beneath Mt. Mansfield | Ams100272 | Public domain | Commons |
| Upper Jester trail, Sugarbush | bill-now | CC BY-SA 3.0 | Commons |
| Jackson Hole aerial tram | Enricokamasa | Public domain | Commons |
| Deer Valley over the Jordanelle Reservoir | Steve Jurvetson | CC BY 2.0 | Commons |
| Copper Mountain storm day | Zach Dischner | CC BY 2.0 | Commons |