Gudauri Ski Resort Guide 2026-27: Lift Passes, Slopes, Stays

Village

2,200 m

Top lift

3,279 m

Day pass 2025-26

70 GEL

From Tbilisi

122 km

We have skied Gudauri every winter for years, on bluebird powder mornings and in whiteouts where the piste markers were the only thing in the world. It is very good, and it is not the Alps. The village is a strip of hotels and apartment blocks along a mountain highway, the road closes, the evenings are quiet, and the season dates are published about a week before the lifts start. It is also a quarter of the price of anywhere comparable in Europe, with terrain that feels more like the Rockies than Austria. This guide covers the resort, the passes, the slopes, the freeride, where to stay and what a day costs. Prices and dates were checked on 12 September 2026 against the operator, Mountain Trails Agency (MTA), its resellers, gotrip.ge, Booking.com and the shops named; dollar figures use the National Bank of Georgia rate of that day (1 USD = 2.61 GEL). Our skiing in Georgia guide compares Gudauri with Bakuriani, Mestia and Goderdzi.

Why Gudauri, honestly

Start with value. A day pass, rented gear and lunch on the mountain come to 180 to 250 GEL ($70-95), which is roughly the lift ticket alone at a big Alpine resort. A mid-January week in a New Gudauri apartment for two cost 1,900 to 2,700 GEL on Booking.com when we checked in September and again in October, about what a long weekend costs in the Alps.

Then the terrain. The whole ski area sits above the treeline on the south-facing slopes of the Greater Caucasus, so you get wide-open bowls, long cruising runs and, off the side of almost every piste, untracked snow with no ropes and nobody shaking their head. The vertical from the top lift to the lowest is 1,283 m. On a clear day you can see the ridges stacking up towards Kazbek.

The downsides are real. No trees means no shelter and no reference points: in cloud the mountain turns to milk, and the wind can shut the top lifts. The resort has no centre; the only walking is along the highway. The Gudauri to Kobi stretch of the road, just above the resort, closes whenever avalanche danger is high, sometimes for days. And the two weeks around New Year are crowded and expensive, which is when a lot of people come.

When to go

MTA opened Gudauri's lifts on 27 December in 2025-26 and ran them until 19 April, the longest season of the four Georgian resorts. Runs open one by one as the snow arrives, so the first week or two can mean a handful of pistes. The opening dates are announced in mid-December and the closing date a week or two before it happens; check mta.ski before you book an early trip.

Getting there from Tbilisi

Gudauri is 122 km north of Tbilisi on the Georgian Military Highway, past Ananuri and the Jinvali reservoir and up the switchbacks below the Jvari Pass. Two hours when the road is clear, longer in snow or on a Saturday morning.

How the resort is laid out

Gudauri is not a village with a square. It is development strung along the highway at about 2,200 m, in two parts. Old Gudauri, lower on the road, has the original hotels, the cheapest rooms and the Pirveli chairlift, the beginners' lift with night skiing. New Gudauri, above it, is the modern hub: apartment towers, the base of the main gondola, most of the rental shops and restaurants, and the buildings where you can genuinely ski to the door. Above New Gudauri the lifts fan out over the plateau to the ridge, and on the far side of the Jvari Pass the Kobi lifts open a second, quieter area whose slopes face the other way and hold snow longer.

The operator counts 17 lifts: four ten-person gondolas, nine chairlifts (six of them detachable high-speed six-seaters, four with bubbles), four button lifts and three moving carpets for beginners, with a combined capacity of about 31,700 people an hour and 22.6 km of cable, by skiresort.info's inventory. The lifts MTA opened first in 2025-26 were Pirveli, Soliko, Gudaura, Kobi, Firni and Truso. Once you are up, moving between areas is easy; it is the base that takes a day to learn, because the highway is the only street.

Slopes and terrain

The marked runs total 34.8 km by skiresort.info's measurement: 4.6 km graded easy, 19.4 km intermediate and 10.8 km difficult. That understates the place, because the runs are separated by open snowfields you can ski when conditions allow, which is how most guides arrive at "80 km". The pistes themselves are long and wide, the gradient is mostly intermediate cruising, and the top sections above 3,000 m are steeper and often wind-blown.

Beginners have the Pirveli slope in Old Gudauri (1,992 to 2,065 m, its own three-seat chairlift) and the moving carpets at the base; intermediates have most of the mountain; the steep marked terrain is near the top lifts and on the Kobi side. Lifts run 10:00 to 17:00 daily. Night skiing runs on Pirveli on Friday and Saturday evenings from 20:00 to 22:00 on a separate pass.

The flat-light problem is the one to plan for. With no trees, cloud takes away every reference point, and a run you cruised in the morning becomes a guessing game after lunch. Carry a phone with the piste map, stay on the marked runs when it closes in, and do not go off the side in flat light even with a partner.

Freeride and off-piste

This is what advanced skiers and boarders come for. Nothing is roped, and you can drop off the side of almost any run into untracked snow: the bowls under the ridge, the slopes on the Kobi side that keep their snow, the couloirs above the upper lifts. After a storm there are fresh lines for hours, which does not happen at a resort of this size in western Europe. The Freeride World Tour has held rounds in Georgia in each of the last three winters, according to the operator's press releases.

Guided freeride days and heli-skiing are sold by several local outfits and through the big booking sites. We have not used them, so compare what matters: group size, whether avalanche kit is included, how many runs or flights a price buys, and the cancellation terms when the weather turns, which it does.

Lift pass prices: the 2025-26 list, and 2026-27

MTA runs all four Georgian resorts and publishes one price list. The adult day pass has been 70 GEL for two seasons: the 2025-26 list was unchanged from 2024-25, and the 2026-27 list appears in mid-December; until then these are the prices to budget with, and a rise of a few lari would not surprise us. Passes are sold at the ticket offices in New and Old Gudauri, at the Marco Polo hotel, and online through tkt.ge, skipass.ge, biletebi.ge and the Bank of Georgia SuperApp from about 23 December.

Gear hire and lessons

Rental shops line New Gudauri and sit inside most hotels. Prices track the age of the kit: Carpe Diem, a hotel shop open 08:00 to 22:00, listed a ski or snowboard set at 120 GEL a day for brand-new gear, 80 GEL for last year's, 70 GEL for four-year-old sets and 60 GEL for older ones on 12 September 2026, with a helmet, goggles, poles, jacket, trousers or gloves at 20 GEL each. The small shops are cheaper for older kit. Bring your own boots if you own them; boots are where every rental fleet is weakest. Check edges and boot liners before you pay, and wear a helmet.

Lessons are cheap by any European measure. One Gudauri ski school we checked charges from 220 GEL for a two-hour private lesson for one person (330 GEL for two, 440 for three), 400 GEL for four hours and 620 GEL for a full day, with English-speaking instructors; book ahead for the holiday weeks. Group and children's lessons are run by the schools and the bigger hotels, not the operator, so ask where you are staying. The Pirveli slope and the moving carpets are where first days happen.

Where to stay

Most visitors rent an apartment in one of the New Gudauri blocks, and that is what we do: a kitchen for breakfast, a balcony for the view, and the gondola a few steps away. The blocks nearest the base let you ski to the door after the last run, which is worth paying for. Old Gudauri is cheaper and further from the main lifts, so budget for the connecting lift or a car. Hotels run from three-star places with breakfast to a few big resort hotels with pools and spas. We book on Booking.com and Airbnb; Airbnb has the wider choice of apartments here. Book New Year and the first half of January months ahead; from late January a week's notice usually finds something.

Eating and evenings

Food is Georgian mountain cooking done for hungry skiers: khachapuri, khinkali, soups, grilled meat, and tea by the pot. The lift-station cafes charge more than Tbilisi; budget 30 to 40 GEL for a mountain lunch with a drink (our estimate, not a menu). New Gudauri has a handful of restaurants and a small supermarket with a thin, expensive range, so if you are self-catering, shop in Tbilisi before you drive up. Evenings are quiet: a few bars in the apartment blocks, hotel restaurants, and a lot of people drinking Georgian wine on their balconies, which is not the worst way to end a day. If you want nightlife, Tbilisi is two hours away.

Off the slopes

Gudauri is a skiing resort and the list is short. Paragliding is the one thing worth planning: tandem flights launch from the ridge above the resort when the weather allows, and a 20-minute flight with hotel transfer and a video was listed at $180 on GetYourGuide in September 2026; local pilots at the launch site sell the same flight for less, in cash, without the transfer. The gondola ride is worth taking as a non-skier for the view from the top station. Hotel pools and spas sell day passes at some properties; ask. And Stepantsminda, 32 km further up the highway, is a snow-covered village under Kazbek in winter and an easy day out when the pass is open; our Kazbegi guide has the details. On the drive up, Ananuri and the Jinvali reservoir are the stops.

What a day costs

A six-day pass brings the lift cost down to about 57 GEL a day, and a week's apartment split between four people drops the bed to under 100 GEL each. For the whole trip, including flights in and the Tbilisi days, use the trip budget calculator.

Summer in Gudauri

The lifts reopen in July: in 2026 MTA started the summer season on 18 July, running the Gudaura, Kobi, Firni and Truso lifts daily from 11:00 to 17:00, with passes sold at the resort ticket offices. Summer Gudauri is green meadows, wildflowers and cool air at 2,200 m, a base for high walks and mountain biking, and the ridge is one of the main paragliding sites in the Caucasus. Most walkers still head on to Kazbegi or Svaneti; if you are driving the Military Highway anyway, an hour on the lifts is worth the stop.

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