When Do the Alpine Passes Close for Winter — and What Stays Open?
Routes & Regions
Published
Most high Alpine passes shut between mid-October and early November, but the dates move every year. Here is how the closures actually work, and which crossings stay open all winter.
Most high Alpine passes close for the winter somewhere between mid-October and early November, and reopen between late April and early June. Almost none of them have a fixed date. The closure is a decision taken by the road authority when snow, ice or avalanche risk makes clearing uneconomic, so a pass can shut a fortnight early after one bad week or stay open into November after a dry autumn. A handful of crossings — mostly valley-floor passes and road tunnels — stay open year-round and are the reliable way through the Alps once the high ground is gone.
That distinction matters more than any single date. A rider planning a late-season trip does not need a calendar of closures; they need to know which category each crossing on their route falls into, and where to check its status the morning they ride it.
Why nobody can give you a closing date
High passes are cleared for as long as clearing is worth doing. Once the snow line drops below the summit and stays there, the road authority sets the barriers and leaves them until spring. Because that call depends on the weather, published season dates are intentions rather than promises.
The pattern is consistent even when the dates are not. The ADAC (Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club, Germany's motoring association) describes the typical window for permanent winter closures as October or November through to April or May, and notes separately that passes still officially open can shut temporarily after heavy snowfall until the road is cleared again. That second case is the one that catches riders out: a pass listed as open on Monday can be closed on Tuesday morning and open again by Thursday.
Published dates are also not all the same kind of date. Some are road closures. Some are the end of a toll operator's season, after which the road is open but unstaffed. Some are the end of a cable-car or lift season and have nothing to do with the road at all.
The 2026 picture, crossing by crossing
The table below covers the crossings riders ask about most, with the figures each operator published for the 2026 season.
| Crossing | 2026 season | Notes for riders |
|---|---|---|
| Timmelsjoch High Alpine Road (Austria–Italy) | 13 May to 20 October 2026 | Open daily 07:00–20:00. Motorcycle toll €18 one way, €25 return; season ticket €85. Opening and closing are explicitly weather-dependent. |
| Grossglockner High Alpine Road (Austria) | Start of May to start of November | Gates open 08:00–17:00 from 27 October 2026, last entry 16:15. Motorcycle day ticket €36.50, reduced to €30.00 from 15 October. Night driving outside gate hours is banned. |
| Stelvio Pass, strada statale 38 (Italy) | No fixed 2026 road date published | In 2025 the South Tyrol side closed on 31 October and full closure was set for 7 November. The Swiss Umbrail side normally closes the same day. |
| Julier, Lukmanier, Simplon, Bernina (Switzerland) | Open all year | Winter equipment obligations apply to cars; chains where signed. |
| Reschen, Arlberg, Flexen, Felbertauern, Gerlos (Austria) | Open all year | Kept open through the winter, subject to temporary closures after snowfall. |
| Brenner state road (Italy) | Open all year | The valley crossing between Austria and Italy, alongside the Brenner motorway. |
The Timmelsjoch High Alpine Road is the first of the big three to go this year, with its published season ending on 20 October 2026. The Grossglockner High Alpine Road runs later but tightens its gate hours sharply in late autumn and expects its final winter closure in early November.
The Stelvio is the awkward one. As of early October 2026 no road closure date had been published; a local Valtellina transport site reported only that the ski lift season was planned to end on 1 November 2026, and was explicit that this does not close the road. The 2025 closure ran to 7 November. Treat early November as the realistic planning assumption and check before committing to it.
What stays open when the high ground does not
Three kinds of crossing survive the winter.
- Valley-floor passes. The Brenner between Austria and Italy, the Reschen between Austria and South Tyrol, and the Arlberg, Flexen, Gerlos and Felbertauern roads in Austria are all kept open year-round, as are the Julier, Lukmanier, Simplon and Bernina in Switzerland.
- Road tunnels. The ADAC lists the Brenner motorway, the Gotthard tunnel and the San Bernardino tunnel as passable all year. Tunnels are the dull answer and almost always the right one in January.
- Car-carrying trains. The Furka car transport between Realp and Oberwald runs all year, takes a little under twenty minutes and saves roughly forty-five minutes against the pass road, which is shut in winter in any case. The operator's public page does not state whether motorcycles are carried or at what fare, so confirm that directly with the railway before building a winter route around it.
Open is not the same as rideable
A pass that is technically open can still refuse you, and the rules that apply to motorcycles are not the ones most riders assume.
Gate hours. Tolled Alpine roads are gated, and the gates close early in autumn. From 27 October 2026 the Grossglockner's last entry is 16:15. The Timmelsjoch shuts at 20:00. Arriving at a barrier after closing time means riding the long way round in the dark.
Winter equipment law. Austria's winter tyre obligation runs from 1 November to 15 April in wintry conditions — and, per the ÖAMTC (Österreichischer Automobil-, Motorrad- und Touring Club, Austria's motoring association), "mopeds, mopeds with pedals and motorcycles are exempt from the winter tyre obligation". Italy works similarly in principle: the Italian motorcycle press reads the Ministry of Infrastructure directive of 16 January 2013, made under Article 6 of the Codice della Strada (Italy's Highway Code), as excluding mopeds and motorcycles from winter equipment requirements, while leaving road owners the power to prohibit circulation in snow or ice by ordinance, with an administrative fine reported at €87 to €344. That reading comes from a legal column rather than the statute itself, so check locally before relying on it.
The practical conclusion is the uncomfortable one: being exempt from a tyre rule is not permission to ride a motorcycle over a frozen pass at 2,500 metres. The law stops short of the point where physics takes over.
Toll seasons. Autumn pricing is not a courtesy. The Grossglockner's motorcycle day ticket drops from €36.50 to €30.00 from 15 October, which is a signal about what the road is like in late season as much as a discount.
Closures that have nothing to do with snow
Two other categories close Alpine routes, and both are easy to miss when planning around weather alone.
Tunnel renovation. Major tunnels are rebuilt in long autumn blocks rather than overnight. The Mont Blanc Tunnel closed completely for fifteen weeks in 2024, from 17:00 on 2 September to 16 December, according to Connexion France, with the same period planned to recur. Any autumn route through that corridor needs checking against the operator's own schedule, not a tourist board page.
Local traffic schemes. Pass roads in the Dolomites and elsewhere are increasingly subject to access restrictions set by regional authorities. Reporting in 2026 suggested a new traffic-calming scheme for the Grödner Joch, also known as Passo Gardena, with timed restrictions on private motor traffic from 1 September. No official South Tyrol publication confirming the scope or the time windows was traceable when this guide was written, so treat it strictly as something to check before you travel rather than a rule to plan around.
How to check a pass before you commit
Check twice: once when planning, and again the morning you ride.
- The operator's own page for tolled roads — grossglockner.at and timmelsjoch.com publish season dates, gate hours and live status for their own roads, and are the only authority on them.
- The national road authority for everything else: Anas for Italian state roads, the provincial road service in South Tyrol, and Bison Futé for France.
- A webcam, not a forecast. Pass summits have cameras. A clear forecast in the valley says nothing about what is lying on the road eight hundred metres higher.
- A fallback crossing in the route itself — the tunnel or valley pass you will take if the high one is shut, decided before you leave rather than at the barrier.
Plan the alternative before you need it
The habit worth building is to draw the high pass and the winter crossing as two versions of the same route, then ride whichever one the morning's road report allows. The Travel Riders route planner makes that straightforward: build the main line over the pass, save it, then build the valley or tunnel variant and keep both, exporting each as a GPX (GPS Exchange Format) file so the fallback is already on the satnav when the barrier is down.
Late October and November are not the end of riding in the Alps. They are the point where the route has to be built around what stays open — and the riders who enjoy that season are the ones who worked out their alternatives in advance instead of discovering them at a closed gate.
Planning a late-season or winter run through the Alps? Build your route and its winter alternative side by side in the Travel Riders route planner, export both, and ride the one the road report gives you.