Ikon Pass Adds 7 Ski Areas in Japan, 1 Each in China, South Korea
Ikon has added 19 new ski areas ahead of the 2025-26 ski season
Alterra just dropped the largest bucket of new Ikon Pass partners since the product’s 2018 debut, adding nine new ski resorts for the 2025-26 ski season. Seven are in Japan, and include four of the 10-largest ski areas in the snowy nation. The other two include Yunding Snow Park in China and Mona Yongpyong in South Korea – the first ski areas from each of those nations to join any U.S.-based multimountain pass:
Ikon Passholders will have seven days with no blackouts on Ikon Pass and five days with no blackouts on Ikon Base at each resort (Shiga Kogen is a Euro-style agglomeration of 18 mostly-interconnected ski areas). Your Ikon Session Pass is no good here.
The seven new ski areas in Japan join existing Ikon partners Niseko United, in Hokkaido prefecture, and Arai Mountain Resort in Niigata prefecture.
With today’s additions, Alterra has added 19 new ski areas since last winter. The Asian ski areas join Ischgl, Austria; Valle d’Aosta, Italy; and Le Massif du Charlevoix as standard seven/five-day Ikon partners. A new two-day tier on the full Ikon Pass debuted with Jiminy Peak, Massachusetts; Cranmore, New Hampshire; and Wild and Buck Mountains in Minnesota; and later added Silver Star and Grouse Mountain, British Columbia, as well as Butternut, Massachusetts. That gives full Ikon passholders access to 89 ski areas for the 2025-26 ski season; 72 of those will be available on Ikon Base, and 52 qualify for Ikon Session:
Today’s Ikon mega-drop blasts an exclamation point onto what has already been a record year for U.S.-based mega-pass additions, eclipsing even 2018 and 2019, when Ikon and Indy debuted and Vail purchased 21 ski areas. Altogether, 87 ski areas in 15 countries have joined the Epic, Ikon, Indy, Mountain Collective, Power, or Snow Triple Play passes in 2025 (two ski areas joined more than one pass).
Notably, just 33 percent of 2025 additions to U.S.-based multimountain passes are U.S. ski areas, accelerating recent trends away from America’s mature pass market and into the vast overseas ski opportunity zones. Forty ski areas outside of North America have joined Epic, Ikon, Indy, or Mountain Capital Partners’ Power Pass for next ski season. Those international additions make up a larger percentage of new multimountain pass partners than in any previous year:
Japan, perhaps the world’s snowiest nation, packs more than 400 ski areas into a country smaller than California (home to 29 ski areas). With today’s additions, 48 of them have joined a U.S.-based multimountain pass for the coming winter.
Ikon Pass’ continued roster growth is remarkable given the product’s high statistical baseline for entry, upscale branding, and large number of ski areas (383) already occupying the Epic (71), Ikon (89), and Indy (223) passes. But the 2025 partner bump also underscores another reality: even with accelerating megapass growth over the past few years, U.S.-based multimountain passes still get you on the lift at just 6.4 percent of the planet’s estimated 6,000 ski areas.
I’ll break down Ikon’s new partners in a future post. Let’s take a deeper look at the 2025 multi-mountain pass surge, where your ski pass can take you in Japan, and why future growth will likely be concentrated overseas.