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Gstaad Palace Opens for the Winter Season, Marking 50 Years of Its Pink Panther Legacy
- Style Essentials Edit Team
- Dec 7, 2025
- 2 min read
When the Gstaad Palace in Gstaad, Switzerland opens for the winter on 15 December 2025, it returns with a story that still holds its charm half a century later. In 1975, Blake Edwards’ The Return of the Pink Panther was filmed largely inside this Alpine landmark — its lobby, revolving doors, and the now-legendary GreenGo nightclub became part of Hollywood’s visual memory. The European premiere was also held here, turning a quiet corner of Saanenland into an unexpected cinematic backdrop.
This winter, the Palace marks the film’s 50-year anniversary with two special screenings in the Salle Baccarat. For General Manager Andrea Scherz, the celebration carries a personal thread — he recalls standing outside the entrance as a six-year-old, watching Peter Sellers and the crew at work. The memory remains vivid, and the film, he says, has lost none of its humour or joy.
Inside the hotel, the season unfolds with its own rhythm. The main restaurant, Le Grand, has been completely redesigned. Its menu blends familiar Alpine comfort with contemporary accents — risotto shaped by regional flavours, poke bowls, tomahawk steak from Simmental, and classics prepared with tableside precision. Christmas Eve turns the Lobby Bar into a warm gathering place, live music filling the space beside a tree that has become a regular feature on Swiss television.
New Year’s Eve takes on a “Vintage Circus” theme, shifting the hotel into a nostalgic, early-20th-century atmosphere where guests drift between the Lobby Bar, GreenGo, and dinner served with a sense of theatre. January begins with the Palace’s well-known seafood brunch, followed by February Sundays dedicated to the same tradition. Other weekly rituals — mussels at Gildo’s Ristorante, or Valentine’s Eve dinners shaped around candlelight and champagne — give the season a gentle momentum.
Beyond the hotel, Gstaad’s winter landscape offers its own kind of drama. Snowshoeing through quiet valleys, helicopter flights over the Wildhorn and Videmanette, or freeriding in untouched powder bring contrast to the stillness that defines Saanenland at this time of year. At day’s end, the Palace Spa becomes the counterpoint — a sauna, a whirlpool under a clear winter sky, or the hotel’s signature longevity-focused wellness sequence.
Music threads its way through the season as well. The Scherzo ensemble plays classical pieces on Christmas Eve; the Treichler Club Gsteig rings in the New Year with traditional cowbells; and February welcomes the Dixieland Bulls Band, bringing a hint of New Orleans to the Swiss Alps.
Younger guests have their own calendar, from storytelling afternoons to holiday craft workshops and baking sessions in the Palace kitchen — rituals that make winter at the Palace feel both grand and familiar.
As the snow settles over Gstaad, Switzerland, the Palace leans into its strength: a blend of heritage, atmosphere, and memory. The return of the Pink Panther screenings is simply one more thread woven into a hotel that has never lost its sense of place — or its ability to create moments that stay with you long after the season ends.
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