FIS and the other bodies that run snow sport.

Founded at Chamonix, 2 February 1924

FIS's own congress-history page for 1924 says the 8th International Ski Congress met on 2 February 1924 at Chamonix, France, with 36 delegates from 14 countries, during the International Winter Sports Week that Olympic history now counts as the first Winter Games. The congress took a Norwegian and Swedish draft as the basis for statutes, and the International Ski Commission then turned itself, unanimously, into the International Ski Federation. FIS says Ivar Holmquist of Sweden was elected its first president and that the abbreviation "FIS" was adopted on his proposal. Patrick Lang's 2024 history for the International Skiing History Association (ISHA) gives the same date, place and 14 national associations.

A summary of FIS's 100th-anniversary page, seen only in search results, described it as naming 15 countries while listing 14. That page now leads to an error, so this site uses the 14 on the congress-history page.

The body had a forerunner. FIS's page for 1910 says the first International Ski Congress met in Christiania (now Oslo) in February 1910 with 22 delegates from 10 countries and created the International Ski Commission, whose job was to set and apply rules for each kind of ski competition. FIS's congress index lists further congresses from 1911 to 1923 before Chamonix. The full story is on FIS and Chamonix 1924.

What the Statutes (Edition 2026) say

The FIS Statutes, Edition 2026, were issued at Oberhofen in June 2026. They name the body the International Ski and Snowboard Federation, abbreviated FIS, and call it the sole and exclusive world governing body for the FIS Disciplines (art. 2). FIS is an association under article 60 and following of the Swiss Civil Code, set up for an indefinite period, with headquarters at Oberhofen/Thunersee (art. 3). English is the official language of FIS and all its parts (art. 4). Lang (2024) says FIS moved into its own headquarters at Oberhofen in early 1990.

The word "Snowboard" in the English name is recent. According to Wikipedia, FIS was called the International Ski Federation in English until 26 May 2022, when the 53rd Congress in Milan changed the name while keeping the acronym. FIS keeps a 2022 Milan entry in its congress history, but it was not opened for this site, so the date rests on Wikipedia.

Congress and Council

• Congress meets every year, generally from mid-May, alternating between a physical meeting and a videoconference, and is conducted in English (Statutes 2026, Ordinary Congress article).
• Council has 23 members: the President elected by Congress, 18 members elected by Congress (four of them Vice-Presidents) and four athletes' representatives from the Athletes' Commission, two of whom must represent Para snowsports (Statutes 2026, Council composition).
• Gender: each gender must hold at least three Council seats (art. 10.10.1.8).
• Terms: four years for the President and two years for a Council member; from the 2022 Ordinary Congress, the President and Council members may serve no more than 12 years counted from the 2022 elections (art. 10.10.1.9).
• Members: only one organisation per country may be the FIS Member Association, and FIS in principle follows the decision of that country's national sports organisation on which body it is (art. 8). The national federations page covers several of them.

The 2026 Congress and election

The 57th International FIS Congress met in Belgrade on 11 June 2026. Its minutes are marked provisional and the copy read for this site is hosted by the Slovak ski federation rather than FIS, so the figures below should be checked against an FIS page. The minutes record 75 delegates present with a total voting weight of 129 votes. In a secret paper ballot, Alexander Ospelt (LIE) was elected President for 2026 to 2030 with 65 votes (50.39%) against 64 (49.61%) for the incumbent, Johan Eliasch (GEO). Trade press reported the same result. The Congress then elected 18 Council members for 2026 to 2028 by electronic vote; the four athlete representatives had been chosen separately.

According to the same provisional minutes, the Congress admitted Guinea-Bissau as a Full Member and Belize as an Associate Member. It ended the membership of India's former national ski association, which the minutes say the Indian Olympic Association no longer recognised after a governance dispute, and admitted Ski and Snowboard India as a Full Member.

The Congress minutes are signed by Urs Lehmann as interim Secretary General. A search-result summary of FIS Council minutes of 19 June 2026 says Michel Vion retired as Secretary General on 30 June 2026 and Lehmann was appointed on an interim basis from 1 July 2026 to 31 March 2027; those minutes were not opened, so the dates are unconfirmed.

The minutes also say a Congress will be held in early July 2028 in Vilnius, Lithuania. They disagree with themselves on its number: the agenda calls it the 59th Congress and the closing text the 58th.

How many members, and how big

FIS gives different figures on different pages, and neither of the two main ones is dated.

Search summaries also show 140, 137 (Wikipedia) and 135 (an IOC page) as member counts, which probably reflect different years, though that could not be confirmed. This site's own count of the "Member Nations" list in the 2026 provisional minutes came to about 142 codes, including Belize; that is a reading of a provisional document, not an FIS figure. The About page also says FIS sanctions over 7,000 competitions and about 330 World Cup events a year. More figures are on how many people ski.

Para snowsports

FIS governs Para alpine, Para cross-country and Para snowboard as disciplines recognised by the IPC (Statutes 2026, art. 2.3), and may also manage Para snow sports governed by another international federation where it holds a written mandate. FIS said in March 2026 that it took over governance of those three disciplines from the IPC in a transfer effective July 2022. See adaptive and Para skiing.

The bodies outside FIS

Biathlon: the IBU

Biathlon is not in the FIS list of disciplines; the International Biathlon Union (IBU) governs it and publishes its competition formats. The IBU's founding date (1993) and headquarters (Anif, near Salzburg) rest on search summaries and Wikipedia, and its member count was found only in undated secondary profiles, so all three are unconfirmed. See biathlon.

Ski mountaineering: the ISMF

Ski mountaineering is also absent from the FIS list. The International Ski Mountaineering Federation (ISMF) governs it. The Olympic Council of Asia reported on 16 March 2025 that Uzbekistan and Pakistan had joined, bringing the ISMF to 55 national members. According to Wikipedia, the ISMF's constitutional assembly met on 27 February 2008 at Champery, Switzerland, growing out of a ski mountaineering body of the UIAA; no ISMF page confirming this was reached. See ski mountaineering and telemark.

Snowboarding outside FIS: the WSF

FIS has not always been the only snowboard body. The World Snowboard Federation (WSF) says on its history page that delegates from 14 nations founded it in Munich on 10 August 2002, and that in 2019 it and FIS reached an agreement under which FIS is the representative governing body and the WSF the authority for grass-roots snowboarding. The WSF also says the earlier International Snowboarding Federation was founded in 1990 and closed in 2002; Wikipedia instead describes an International Snowboard Association founded in 1989 and renamed in 1991. That history is on snowboarding joins the mountain.