Say “Turkey” in a British office in January and people think of Antalya’s beaches, not lift queues. Yet a quarter of the country sits above 1,200 metres, and above Kayseri in central Anatolia rises a volcano of almost 4,000 metres whose lifts take you up to 3,346 metres. A single lift ride there cost 120 lira in the 2025/26 season, which works out at roughly £1.80.

Skiing in Turkey comes down to five names worth knowing: Erciyes near Kayseri, Uludağ above Bursa, Palandöken by Erzurum, Kartalkaya in the Köroğlu Mountains and Sarıkamış near Kars. Below we compare all five Turkey ski resorts, explain how the lift passes work (one of them sells rides, not days), and tell you honestly who will love it and who should stay in the Alps.

Why go skiing in Turkey, and who shouldn’t

There are three good reasons. First, the lift pass: even after this season’s rises it costs a fraction of an Alpine one. Second, altitude. Erciyes and Palandöken both ski above 3,000 metres, and the snow up there tends to be dry and light. Third, what you can do around the skiing. A week under Erciyes leaves room for a day in Cappadocia, a weekend at Uludağ pairs well with Istanbul or Bursa. That combination is what we like most: pistes in the morning, then tea, a kebab and a city where nobody is selling you après-ski.

Now the other side. Skiing is a minority sport in Turkey, and the atmosphere reflects it. At weekends the blue runs near the bottom stations fill up with sledgers, children and people seeing snow for the first time in their lives, while the red and black runs higher up are often almost empty. A Czech travel blogger who spent a week at Erciyes (cestujpolopate.cz) wrote that the highest pistes stayed shut on weekdays even with no wind, and that wind and fog close the top lifts more often than you’d expect in the Alps. If you want perfect corduroy across hundreds of kilometres of linked runs, Turkey will disappoint you.

So who should give it a miss? Anyone who needs a beer at a slope-side bar every afternoon (alcohol is sold mainly in hotels) and anyone who can’t cope when things don’t go to plan. If you know all that before you book, you get skiing with a bit of adventure attached. Our approach would be “five days on skis, two days of Turkey”.

Mount Erciyes (3,917 m) above the ski resort near Kayseri. The pistes start just above 2,000 metres and there are hardly any trees. Photo: Hmyr2021, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Turkey ski season: when to go

Most resorts open in mid-December. In winter 2025/26 Erciyes started on 18 December, Sarıkamış on 17 December and Palandöken as early as the beginning of December. Uludağ sells its season pass as valid from 18 December to 31 March. Neither Erciyes nor Palandöken commits to an exact date in advance: they open when the snow allows and announce it on social media.

• January and February are the most reliable months. Inland Anatolia is properly cold at that time of year, Erzurum well below freezing, and the snow stays put.
• March brings longer days and more sun, but in the lower resorts such as Uludağ and Kartalkaya the snow disappears quickly in spring. In 2025/26 Palandöken stayed open into April thanks to good conditions.
• Turkish mid-term school holidays (sömestr, about two weeks from the second half of January) are the busiest time. Hotels charge more, the pistes are packed and Erciyes runs night skiing every day.

Weekends and weekdays are two different worlds in every Turkish resort. Thousands of people drive up from Kayseri, Bursa, Istanbul and Ankara, many of them just to sledge and have a barbecue. If you can, keep the weekend for sightseeing and ski Monday to Friday.

How to get to Turkey’s ski resorts from the UK

Via Istanbul and a domestic flight

For most British skiers the route runs through Istanbul. Turkish Airlines flies there from Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and other UK airports into Istanbul Airport, and Pegasus flies from Stansted into Sabiha Gökçen on the Asian side; from London it’s roughly four hours. From Istanbul, domestic flights continue to Kayseri, Erzurum and Kars. According to the Erciyes operator, there are fifteen a day to Kayseri alone and the flight takes an hour. Check which Istanbul airport your connection leaves from: switching between the two takes well over an hour.

City buses run from Kayseri up to Erciyes too. At weekends and during the Turkish mid-term holidays they leave from the Kale Önü stops in the centre between 8.30 and 11.30 and come back between 15.00 and 17.30. On weekdays you can take the minibus to Develi, which leaves from the Yoğunburç terminal every 15 minutes. You pay on buses and minibuses with a local transport card or a contactless bank card.

Package holidays and winter charters to Kayseri

The easiest way to reach Erciyes is to land right below it. Tour operators in several European countries run winter charter flights straight to Kayseri, some of them with SunExpress, and Turkey ski packages do appear on the UK market as well, so it is worth comparing what is on offer for your dates. From Kayseri airport the resort is about half an hour away. A typical package includes the flight, transfer, a half-board hotel, the lift pass (50 rides at some hotels, a six-day pass at others) and a ski bag up to 15 kg.

Packages for the popular January weeks sell out early, while last-minute deals to simpler hotels can be very cheap. Prices depend heavily on the departure airport, so check current dates and prices directly with the operator.

Driving in Turkey in winter

A hire car makes sense mainly for day trips to Cappadocia or if you want to stay in town. On mountain roads you’ll need winter tyres and snow chains. On the road to Kartalkaya, the gendarmerie (jandarma) checks equipment when it snows and turns back cars without winter tyres or chains. Entering Uludağ National Park costs 225 TL per car (about £3.40), and the lift pass doesn’t cover it. Remember that Turkey drives on the right.

5 ski resorts in Turkey: which one suits you

Turkey has more than forty ski areas, but most are small local hills. For a skier flying in from abroad, the five below are the ones that make sense. We take piste data from the independent survey at skiresort.info, because the resorts’ own figures often include off-piste terrain and ungroomed runs.

1. Erciyes: the volcano above Kayseri and Turkey’s biggest ski resort

Erciyes is now the largest and most modern ski resort in Turkey. It spreads across the slopes of the extinct Erciyes volcano (3,917 m), about 25 km from Kayseri, and the lift network starts from four base areas around the mountain: Develi, Tekir, Hisarcık and Hacılar. The whole resort was built to a single masterplan with Austrian specialists and lifts and snowmaking from Doppelmayr, Leitner and TechnoAlpin. The operator, Kayseri Erciyes A.Ş., claims more than 100 km of runs, but its own piste list adds up to 41 runs and about 65 km, and the independent survey counts 55 km. The operator’s split: 36% blue, 42% red and 22% black.

There are fourteen lifts, including two gondolas (Tekir and Lifos from Hacılar), plus five magic carpets for beginners. The highest lift is the Ottoman chair, which tops out at 3,346 metres, and from there starts the longest run in the resort, black number 14, dropping 4.2 km to 2,268 metres. Lifts run from 9am until 3pm to 5pm depending on the lift (the Ottoman only 10am–3pm). Beginners are best off in the Tekir and Develi areas with their gentle blue runs, and in the 2025/26 season the drag lift at Hisarcık was even free.

Night skiing: every Friday and Saturday, and daily during the Turkish mid-term holidays, on run 13 by the Tekir gate until 8pm. Helmets are compulsory at Erciyes, for everyone.

Above the treeline the slopes are wide and open, with plenty of off-piste terrain between the runs. What we like most about Erciyes is the view: from the chairlift you see the white tip of the volcano above you and, far below, the plain around Kayseri. In clear weather the summit area is said to look out a long way across Anatolia. On the downside, wind and fog shut the top lifts fairly often, and according to skiers who have been there, crossing from one side of the mountain to the other can take 40 minutes.

2. Palandöken: high altitude and the toughest runs in Turkey

Palandöken rises above Erzurum in eastern Turkey, and for strong skiers it’s the most interesting ski resort in the country. The pistes start at around 2,150 metres and climb to 3,140 metres; the independent survey counts 43 km of runs and sixteen lifts. Erzurum is one of the coldest cities in Turkey, and the dry continental climate produces fine powder. According to guidebooks the longest descent is around 12 km with a thousand metres of vertical, and the black Ejder run on the north face is one of the steepest in Turkey.

The big upgrade came with the 2011 Winter Universiade. Today the area is run by the municipal company Ejder 3200, and that’s the name you’ll also see in some holiday brochures. The same range holds the smaller and cheaper Konaklı area (Palandöken 2), which has its own lift pass. Palandöken also has night skiing on floodlit runs; the resort only publishes the days and times once the season is under way.

The hotels stand right by the bottom stations and Erzurum sits just below the mountain. In the evening you can head down into town for cağ kebap, the local speciality roasted on a horizontal spit. For us Palandöken is the best choice for anyone who mainly wants to ski in Turkey and doesn’t mind a longer journey.

3. Uludağ: Turkey’s oldest ski resort, above Bursa

Uludağ (2,543 m) is the mountain above Bursa, Turkey’s fourth-largest city, not far from the Sea of Marmara. People skied here before anywhere else in Turkey, and it is still the best-known resort in the country, the one Turkish celebrities go to. The whole area has been a national park since 1961; the pistes run through fir and pine forest, and the operator lists 24 lifts on 43 runs. The independent survey measures 28 km between 1,781 and 2,322 metres.

Uludağ is more of a hotel resort than a ski resort. The big hotels in the Oteller Bölgesi (hotel zone) have their own lifts and rental shops and sell all-inclusive stays. Beginners get wide, gentle slopes, while experienced skiers will find black runs and a bit of off-piste among the trees. The weak point is altitude: in a warm winter the snow suffers here more than at Erciyes or Palandöken, and being so close to Istanbul makes weekends very crowded.

The Teleferik gondola runs up from Bursa: about 9 km long, it takes 25 to 30 minutes from Teferrüç station to the hotel zone and operates from 10am to 7pm. A return ticket cost 500 TL (about £7.50) in 2026 on the fare for Turkish citizens; the operator doesn’t publish a price for foreigners on its website. The lift pass doesn’t include the gondola from Bursa.

4. Sarıkamış: pine forests and dry snow near the Armenian border

Sarıkamış is a small town in Kars province in north-eastern Turkey, close to the borders with Georgia and Armenia. You ski on the northern slopes of Cıbıltepe between 2,130 and 2,632 metres, with pine forest all around the pistes. There are about 21 km of runs and five lifts, which sounds modest, but on weekdays the slopes are often empty. Thanks to the continental climate the snow is dry and loose; locals call it “crystal snow”. You’ll also find cross-country trails and snowmobiles for hire.

It’s a long way to get here: via Istanbul or Ankara to Kars, then about 50 km by car. If you have a romantic streak, take the Doğu Ekspresi train from Ankara to Kars, which crosses snowy Anatolia over a day and a night and is often sold out well in advance in winter. We’d recommend Sarıkamış to anyone who wants to combine skiing with a trip around eastern Turkey, for example Kars and the ruins of the medieval city of Ani on the Armenian border.

5. Kartalkaya: ski-in, ski-out hotels in the Köroğlu Mountains

Kartalkaya lies in the Köroğlu Mountains, about 40 km from Bolu and roughly halfway between Istanbul and Ankara. It’s a small resort between 1,900 and 2,200 metres with 18.5 km of runs and nine lifts, surrounded by conifer forest. There’s no village, just a handful of large hotels right on the slopes, which also run the lifts.

That comes with a practical catch: the resort is split into two parts, Kartal and Dorukkaya, and a pass for one doesn’t work on the other’s lifts. If you stay in a hotel, the lift pass included in your stay usually only covers “your” side. For families with children it’s a pleasant place: out of your room and straight onto the snow, no shuttles. For experienced skiers, though, Kartalkaya is too small for a week.

In Turkey, Kartalkaya is still linked to a tragedy. On the night of 21 January 2025 the Grand Kartal hotel burned down and 78 people died, dozens of them children. The investigation found that the fire alarm hadn’t worked, and in October 2025 a court in Bolu sentenced the hotel’s owner and ten other people to life imprisonment. Wherever you go, check the escape routes in your hotel, and not only in Turkey.

Other resorts you’ll hear about

• Kartepe above İzmit is the closest resort to Istanbul: small, low and less snow-sure. Better for a day trip.
• Saklıkent in the Taurus Mountains is about an hour and a half from Antalya. Its appeal is the combination: in spring you can ski in the morning and sit by the sea in the afternoon. As a ski area, though, it’s a small hill.
• Davraz near Isparta is another small resort, visited on day trips from the Riviera resorts.

Turkey ski pass prices in lira and pounds

Every resort has a different operator and a different system. Erciyes sells rides, Palandöken and Uludağ sell days, and at Kartalkaya a pass only covers one of the two sides of the mountain. Below are the latest known prices from the 2025/26 season. None of the five resorts has published day-pass prices for winter 2026/27 yet; Uludağ has only released its season passes. Because of inflation, expect lira prices to rise, although in pounds they tend to change less as the lira keeps weakening. Conversions are approximate (100 TL ≈ £1.50).

The Erciyes prices come from the official price list of Kayseri Erciyes A.Ş., Palandöken published its tariff through local media, and Uludağ sells passes via uludagshop.com. For Kartalkaya and Sarıkamış we only found prices in Turkish guides, so treat them as a rough guide.

Good to know:

• Erciyes counts rides, not days. Rides are valid on any day of the season but can’t be carried over to the next winter, and there must be five minutes between two passes through the turnstile, so two people can’t share one card. Skiers who have been there reckon on 12 to 15 rides a day, so for a week roughly 50 + 30 rides. The card itself costs 50 TL the first time, and a replacement for a lost one 100 TL (only with the receipt showing the serial number).
• Children: at Erciyes the child price applies up to and including age 12; from 13 you pay the adult rate.
• Uludağ: day and multi-day passes are personal and the system blocks them if they’re shared. The only shareable option is points tickets (5 points for 1,200 TL, 10 points for 2,100 TL), which work well for families. Night skiing needs a separate ticket.
• Palandöken: the card costs 200 TL and isn’t included in the pass price. A season pass cost 24,000 TL.
• No refunds: at both Erciyes and Uludağ, if the lifts close because of wind or a breakdown, you don’t get your money back. At Erciyes, at least, unused rides stay on the card for the next day.

Is skiing in Turkey cheap? The cost of a week

In Turkey the lift pass is the cheap part. Flights and hotels cost more, because accommodation right on the slopes at Erciyes and Palandöken is mostly four- and five-star.

To put it in perspective: on a package, the only extras are equipment hire, food on the mountain and excursions. According to skiers who have been, food and drink in the mountain huts at Erciyes cost about the same as in Italy; it only gets cheap down in town. If you want to save money, stay in Kayseri and take the bus or a taxi up to the slopes. The resort actively encourages this and says the city has 5,000 hotel beds.

Where to stay for skiing in Turkey

We picked hotels for their position by the lifts and found all of them on Booking.com.

Erciyes

• Megasaray Mount Erciyes: a large new hotel (opened in December 2023) with 106 rooms, ski-in, ski-out access, a kids’ club and, according to the operator, the only heated outdoor pool at any Turkish ski hotel. Full board plus.
• Radisson Blu Hotel, Mount Erciyes: a hotel by the Develi gate with direct access to the lifts, and one that tour operators regularly use for ski packages.

For more hotels by the slopes (Das 3917, Mirada del Lago, Kaf Otel at Hacılar and others), try this search for accommodation at Erciyes. Cheaper beds in town: hotels in Kayseri.

Palandöken

• Dedeman Palandoken Ski Lodge Hotel: a hotel right in the ski resort above Erzurum.
• Polat Palandöken: a large hotel by the slopes above Erzurum.

More options: accommodation at Palandöken.

Uludağ

• Bof Hotels Uludağ Ski & Luxury Resort: an all-inclusive hotel in the hotel zone, as is the custom at Uludağ.
• Trendlife Hotels Uludağ: another all-inclusive hotel in the hotel zone.

More hotels: accommodation at Uludağ.

Kartalkaya and Sarıkamış

• Dorukkaya Ski & Mountain Resort: a hotel on the Dorukkaya side; its lift pass usually only covers that side’s lifts.
• Kayi Snow Hotel: a hotel in Sarıkamış by the ski area.

More choice: accommodation at Kartalkaya and accommodation at Sarıkamış.

Skiing plus Cappadocia, Istanbul or Bursa

For us this is the main reason to go skiing in Turkey rather than anywhere else. Every resort has something on its doorstep that you won’t find in the Alps.

• Cappadocia from Erciyes: rock-cut towns, underground cities and churches carved into the tuff are about an hour from the pistes. The Göreme area is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and in good weather hot-air balloons take off above it even in winter. We think the fairy chimneys look better under snow than in summer. For a day trip a car or a hotel excursion is enough, and you can spend a night in a cave hotel: accommodation in Göreme.
• Kayseri: ancient Caesarea, with a citadel, Seljuk caravanserais and mosques. Above all, though, the food: pastırma (cured spiced beef), sucuk sausage and tiny mantı, Turkish dumplings served with yoghurt. Ideal for an evening.
• Bursa below Uludağ: the first capital of the Ottoman Empire, with the Green Mosque, a covered bazaar and thermal baths. This is where İskender kebap was born. Bursa, together with the village of Cumalıkızık, has been on the UNESCO list since 2014.
• Istanbul: you’ll be flying through it anyway, so add a couple of days to your ski trip. From Istanbul you can reach Uludağ or Kartalkaya by car or by bus.
• Erzurum and Kars: Seljuk madrasas with twin minarets in Erzurum, and from Kars a trip to the ruins of the medieval Armenian city of Ani right on the border.

Practical information: passports, insurance and slope rules

Passport, visa and insurance

British citizens travel to Turkey on a passport. According to the UK government’s travel advice, it must have an expiry date at least 150 days after the date you arrive and at least one blank page. You don’t need a visa for tourism: you can stay up to 90 days in any 180-day period (gov.uk). If you travel on another passport, check the rules for your nationality.

Lift passes in Turkey include no insurance at all. Erciyes states this explicitly in its rules and accepts no liability for accidents away from marked runs. Travel insurance with winter sports cover is therefore a must, not an extra. If you plan to ski off-piste, make sure your policy covers that too, including mountain rescue.

Rules and customs on the slopes

• Helmets are compulsory for everyone at Erciyes, and we strongly recommend them at the other resorts.
• Off-piste is at your own risk. Turkish resorts have no Alpine-style avalanche service, so for freeriding an avalanche kit and a local guide are essential.
• Lift status: Erciyes publishes it every morning on its website, green means open. Skiers who’ve been there advise checking before you leave the hotel; the information is usually up to date by around nine.
• Alcohol: don’t expect it in most mountain huts. Instead of mulled wine people drink tea and salep, a hot milky drink thickened with orchid flour. You’ll get beer and wine mainly in hotels.
• Snowboarders in Turkey often ride the chairlift with the board in their hand rather than on their foot. And at weekends, expect someone sitting just below the brow of the slope having a cigarette.

A little history

Turkey’s mountains have a much longer story than skiing. In antiquity Uludağ was called Olympus, the Mysian Olympus, to tell it apart from the Greek Olympus in Thessaly. Below the Erciyes volcano, known to the Romans as Argaeus, lay the city of Caesarea, today’s Kayseri, and the mountain even appeared on its coins.

Skiing in Turkey began above Bursa, and for most of the 20th century Uludağ remained the country’s main resort, visited mostly for its big hotels. The big leap came only in the last two decades. Erzurum hosted the 2011 Winter Universiade, which brought modern lifts and new runs to Palandöken. Kayseri then worked with Austrian companies to rebuild Erciyes from a small local hill into a resort with dozens of kilometres of pistes; according to SNOW magazine, the snowmaking system alone cost around 50 million euros. According to guidebooks, the number of people skiing in Turkey nearly doubled between 2004 and 2014.

Sarıkamış has a darker memory. Over the winter of 1914–15 the Ottoman army fought the Russians here in deep snow and bitter frost, and tens of thousands of soldiers died not in battle but from freezing in the mountains. The Battle of Sarıkamış is one of the most tragic events in Turkish history, and the forests where people ski today are a place of remembrance for Turks.

What we’d do differently

If we were skiing in Turkey for the first time, we wouldn’t try to use up every ride on the card. At Erciyes it’s tempting: you’ve paid for fifty rides and you want to get through them. But the best day of the week probably won’t be the one with the most kilometres. It will be the day the top lifts are shut by wind, and instead of waiting in the fog you drive down to Cappadocia, walk among the snow-covered fairy chimneys and finish the evening in a small eatery in Ürgüp or Kayseri.

We’d try things. Pastırma from a butcher in Kayseri, mantı instead of the hotel buffet, tea from a tulip glass at the mountain hut instead of coffee from a machine. Turkish food in the mountains is simpler than in the cities, but all the more honest for it, and the barbecue spots by the bottom stations, where whole families grill meat at weekends, are an experience in themselves.

And we’d keep the weekend free. On Saturday half the city heads up to Erciyes, Uludağ or Kartalkaya, and the pistes fill with sledges and selfies. Rather than fighting for a seat on the chairlift, we’d spend that day in town and go up the mountain on Monday morning, when the runs at the top are empty. And your phone? Leave it in your pocket while the white tip of the volcano shines above you. You won’t capture it the way it really looks anyway.

Skiing in Turkey: frequently asked questions

Where next

• Skiing in Georgia: Gudauri and Svaneti, another affordable ski trip with an adventure in the Caucasus thrown in.
• Skiing in Italy: the Dolomites, Livigno and other resorts, with lift pass prices.
• Austria ski pass prices: for when you want guaranteed snow and the classic Alpine experience.
• St. Moritz in Switzerland: the exact opposite of Turkey, Swiss lifts and Swiss prices.