SAM Magazine—Park City, Utah, Oct. 12, 2026—Snowboarding participation grew about 9 percent in 2025-26 compared to the previous winter while the number of active skiing participants remained flat, according to the 2025-26 Participation Study from Snowsports Industries America (SIA), which also found that 31.96 million Americans took part in snowsports last winter, a 3 percent year-over-year gain and the highest total in six seasons.
The study covers skiing, snowboarding, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, sledding, fat-tire biking and touring, with demographics, regional data and crossover activity. Results are derived from 15,000 surveys carried out with a nationwide sample of individuals and households during late 2025 and the beginning of 2026 for a representative panel of the U.S. population for people aged six and older. Snowsport participation is defined as having participated at least once during the season in one of the tracked sports.
Despite a mixed bag of weather last winter around the country, the share of the American population aged six and older that took part reached 10.3 percent, up from 10 percent in 2024-25.
The growth in participants was primarily driven by snowboarding. Total snowboard participants reached 10.6 million, up from 9.7 million the season before and 7.1 million in 2017-18. The year-over-year growth comes from both new riders trying it for the first time and returning riders coming back from a season or more away, combining for a total of 4.2 million compared to 3.3 million lapsed in 2025-26, down from 4.4 million lapsed in 2024-25.
Snowboarding also grew among a younger and more diverse crowd than alpine skiing. For example, despite having 20 percent fewer total participants than alpine skiing, snowboarding had almost the same number of participants younger than age 25 (5.3 million snowboarders, 5.5 million alpine skiers).
Hispanic participation in snowboarding rose for the third straight season to 2.2 million, up from 1.8 million in 2023-24. One in four female snowboarders is now Hispanic.
The second is interest. Snowboarding is often the way people first get into winter sports. Twenty-nine percent of all winter sport participants say it was their first winter sport, compared with 16 percent of alpine skiers who say skiing was theirs. Among people who didn’t participate this year, more say they will “definitely” snowboard next winter (1.8 percent) than say the same about skiing (1.1 percent).
“Snowboarding’s growth, especially among younger and more diverse participants, shows where the next generation of snowsports is coming from,” said SIA president and CEO Nick Sargent. “Our industry’s job now is to continue to grow the pipeline of new participants, and to expand the key learnings from snowboard in effort to build a similar pipeline for skiing.”
Alpine skiing participation was flat at about 13.2 million, roughly steady with the past four seasons and well below its 2018-19 peak of 14.9 million. The number of new and returning skiers (6 million) matched the number who lapsed (6 million).
And alpine skiers are older than snowboarders, with 1.9 million skiers age 55 or older, compared with 0.3 million snowboarders. There are more than double the number of skiers ages 45-54 (1.35 million) than snowboarders (0.59 million).
This is a concern given the steady decline in new skiers over the past few years, which is in line with findings in the National Ski Areas Association’s Kottke End of Season and Guest Experience Study that has shown the number of lessons given at ski areas has also been on the decline.
Despite the growth in ski and snowboard participants, the frequency in which they participated declined. Self-reported skiing (alpine, freeski, telemark) days decreased 6 percent and snowboarding days were down 3 percent, driven primarily by participation declines in the Mountain region. In other regions, the report found little to no frequency change between seasons, despite better snow conditions in many cases.
