Snowboarding Continues to Grow in the USA

9th October 2026

Snowsports Industries America says participation has increased roughly 9% to 10.6 million people during the 2025/26 season. That is up from 9.7 million the year before. NEW

Snowboarding has now grown in seven of the past eight seasons in the USA.

Participation has increased from 7.1 million riders in 2017-18 and has led to nearly 50% more participants than it did at the start of that period.

The growth has also been particularly strong since the covid pandemic, with nearly 30% more snowboarders during the 2025-26 season than in 2021-22.

About 4.2 million people had either tried snowboarding for the first time or returned after spending at least one season away.

That compares with 3.3 million riders who lapsed from the sport.

The sport is also attracting a younger and increasingly diverse audience, 5.3 million participants under the age of 25.

That nearly matches alpine skiing’s 5.5 million despite having significantly fewer total participants.

“Americans kept coming back to winter this season, even when the snow didn’t cooperate,” said the president and CEO of Snowsports Industries America, Nick Sargent.

“Snowboarding’s growth, especially among younger and more diverse participants, shows where the next generation of snowsports is coming from.

“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 ”

Snowboarding also serves as an entry point into winter sports.

29% of winter sport participants say snowboarding was their first winter sport, compared with 16% who say alpine skiing was their first.

Among people who did not participate during the 2025-26 season, 1.8% said they would definitely snowboard next winter.

Only 1.1% said the same about skiing.

Alpine skiing remained essentially flat at approximately 13.2m participants.

While skiing continues to attract millions of Americans, participation has not kept pace with population growth and remains below its 2018-19 peak of 14.9m.

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