Château-d'Œx sits in a Vaudois valley whose winter air is unusually stable, which is why balloonists have gathered there since 1979 and why Bertrand Piccard's round-the-world flight launched from it in 1999. Around eighty balloons from a dozen countries fly each morning, with night glows and shaped balloons in the evenings.
No attendance figure is collected in this pass.
The microclimate is the whole reason for the dates: this is a seasonal window set by meteorology. Flights are cancelled at short notice when conditions turn, and the published programme always carries that caveat.
The village is small and on the MOB railway between Montreux and Gstaad, which is how most visitors arrive.
PlanningA late-January window chosen for the valley's microclimate, not for the calendar.