Tough Luck for FWT continues: Fieberbrunn Pro had to be cancelled

After a slow start into winter, conditions had dramatically improved in the Skicircus Saalbach Hinterglemm Leogang Fieberbrunn over February and everything looked promising for the Fieberbrunn Pro, the Freeride World Tour event with a history only second to the original Xtreme Verbier. However, as the FWT officials stated in their announcement, “increased humidity and new snowfall changed the snowpack and triggered an avalanche that affected a large part of the venue.” As a consequence, the event was cancelled since “maintaining consistent standards is essential to the credibility of the Tour and the Overall Title.”

The FWT Commissioners together with their Safety Team did their best to make a World Tour competition happen. Over the last few days they evaluated not only several options around Fieberbrunn but in the whole of Tyrol, yet none presented conditions that would meet all required standards in respect to safety, quality of terrain and quality of snow. In fact, Fieberbrunn still offered the best conditions around and hadn’t it been for the avalanche incident, the Wildseeloder would have been a valid option despite less snow in the face compared to many other years. On Saturday, March 7, the Junior FWT event is still taking place as its venue isn’t affected by the avalanche and snow conditions allow for a good competition on a different section of the Wildseeloder. So if you have planned a trip to Fieberbrunn on the weekend, it’s still worthwhile with the offers of the event village in full operation, the option to watch the next generation of freeride stars and the chance to have a good shred on your own.

Since two out of four events before the cut ahead of the 2026 FWT finals are now cancelled, the ranking deciding about the cut is considering all FWT results gathered by athletes this season. Have a look at the current tour rankings on the FWT website to see whether your favorite rider has earned a ticket to AK and Verbier. Notable omissions on the list of qualified riders are current Freeride World Champion Zuzanna Witych in Ski Women’s and former tour champions Valentin Rainer and Kristofer Turdell in Ski Men’s. It’s a particularly sad situation for all tour rookies who didn’t make the cut. They spent lots of time and effort to qualify and now they only got two FWT contests to prove their talent. Fortunately this doesn’t concern any of the tour rookies in the Ski Women’s field, but in Ski Men’s we already have to say goodbye—at least for this season—to Lochlan Harvey, Paul de Pourtalès and Kelly Hilleke. Hopefully they will re-qualify for another season.

Next up on the Freeride World Tour calendar is the much anticipated return to Haines, Alaska in less than two weeks. We’ll keep you posted.