Hotels for Spengler Cup 2026

Every year between Christmas and New Year, the small Alpine resort of Davos becomes one of hockey's most atmospheric stages, as six invited club sides from across Europe and North America gather for the Spengler Cup. The 2026 edition runs from 26 to 31 December, with the final on New Year's Eve, all of it played at the Vaillant Arena — renamed the zondacrypto Arena in 2024, though still widely known by its long-standing name — the compact rink that has hosted the tournament since it moved indoors.

Host club HC Davos always take part, and the town's hotels, chalets and mountain restaurants fill completely for the week, packed with skiers taking a break on the slopes as much as travelling hockey fans. Davos sits high in the Graubünden Alps, reachable by scenic rail from Zürich or Chur, with the Parsenn and Jakobshorn ski areas a cable car ride from the rink. Book well ahead — Christmas week in a small ski town hosting one of hockey's great traditions is always in heavy demand.

The Spengler Cup is the oldest invitational ice hockey tournament in the world, first played in 1923 at the instigation of Dr Carl Spengler, a Davos physician who wanted to use sport to help reunite nations divided by the First World War. Four teams contested that inaugural tournament — Berlin, Vienna, HC Davos and Oxford University, whose side was largely made up of Canadian students — and it was Oxford who won the first Spengler Cup, beating the two German-speaking clubs on home Swiss ice.

The tournament was played outdoors for more than fifty years before moving into the town's indoor rink in 1978, and it has run almost every Christmas since, interrupted only by the Second World War and, more recently, the Covid-19 pandemic. Little else about it has changed: a small Alpine town, a handful of invited clubs, and one of the longest unbroken traditions in club ice hockey anywhere in the world.

Long known as the Vaillant Arena and renamed the zondacrypto Arena in 2024, this compact rink in the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos has been the sole home of the Spengler Cup since the tournament moved indoors in 1978. HC Davos play here year-round, but for six days every Christmas the small town fills with hockey fans from across Europe.

Davos is better known for skiing and the World Economic Forum, with cable cars up to the Parsenn and Jakobshorn slopes nearby. Staying centrally puts the rink, the shops and the mountain lifts within easy reach.