The 14 best winter destinations in Europe

It’s officially winter. There’s no denying it. It was only Halloween a second ago and now we seem to be hurtling ever closer to Christmas. But don’t let it feel like Christmas is the only thing going for this time of year – there’s plenty of time for nesting in December. In our opinion, this is the perfect time for a holiday. 

After all, European breaks weren’t all they cracked up to be this summer, marked by heatwaves and overtourism. So we’d go as far as to argue that a ton of the most well-loved holiday hotspots are even better in winter, when summer destinations lose their throngs of tourists, and cosy breaks get even cosier. On our list of the best winter destinations in Europe, we’ve got everything from Italian foodie breaks to the official home of Santa Claus. Here are our favourite spots in Europe for winter to embrace the cold for 2024.

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Ella Doyle is Time Out’s guides editor. At Time Out, all of our travel guides are written by local writers who know their cities inside out. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines. This guide includes affiliate links, which have no influence on our editorial content. For more information, see our affiliate guidelines.