Around 40 people were killed and more than 100 injured after a fire tore through a bar at a ski resort where revellers were celebrating the New Year, Swiss police have said. The blaze broke out at about 1:30am (00:30 GMT) at Le Constellation, a bar located in the centre of the upmarket Alpine resort of Crans-Montana in south-western Switzerland, according to a police statement released on Thursday.
President Guy Parmelin said Switzerland would observe five days of national mourning, describing the disaster as one of the darkest moments in the country’s history. Calling it “a tragedy on an unimaginable scale”, he said the nation owed it to the young people whose “projects, hopes and dreams” were cut short to ensure such a tragedy never happened again.
Swiss authorities are in a race against time to establish the identities of the victims after the fire swept through the overcrowded bar. The canton’s chief prosecutor, Beatrice Pilloud, said substantial resources had been committed “to establish the identities of the victims and to return their bodies to their families as quickly as possible”. Authorities in Switzerland have cautioned that the process of identifying all the victims could extend over many days, and potentially weeks. It is still unclear how many people were inside the bar when the fire broke out, and police have yet to say how many individuals may still be missing.
The origin of the fire and the way it rapidly spread remain unclear. On Thursday, The Associated Press reported that Swiss officials had described the incident as an “embrasement généralisé.” In French firefighting terminology, this refers to a situation where a fire releases combustible gases that can ignite suddenly, creating a phenomenon similar to what English-speaking firefighters call a flashover or backdraft.
Crans-Montana, situated around 200 kilometres south of Bern, attracts visitors from neighbouring countries as well as within Switzerland. Perched high in the Valais canton, the resort town of roughly 10,000 residents offers sweeping views of the Alps, including the famous Matterhorn. Unlike nearby Verbier, which tends to draw wealthy English-speaking visitors, Crans-Montana is mainly frequented by affluent Europeans. The bar, a favourite spot for tourists, was crowded at the time of the fire, with Swiss media outlets reporting that over 100 people were inside, citing police.
The Crans-Montana blaze comes shortly after a similar tragedy at a nightclub in Arpora, Goa, in December 2025. A fire swept through a popular venue in the busy coastal tourist area, killing at least 25 people and injuring many others. The incident occurred during peak season, when the club was crowded with both locals and visitors. Such disasters are, unfortunately, not isolated. In March 2025, a fire at Pulse Club in Kocani, North Macedonia, triggered by pyrotechnics, caused the roof to catch fire. A stampede that followed killed 63 people and injured more than 200, most of them young revellers.
In April 2024, a fire broke out at the Masquerade Nightclub in Istanbul, Turkey, during renovations in the city’s densely populated area, leaving 29 dead, though not all victims were tourists. In 2008, the Wuwang Club in Shenzhen, China, saw a pyrotechnics display ignite the ceiling, killing 43 and injuring 88.
Historically, the Cocoanut Grove fire in Boston, USA, in 1942 remains one of the deadliest nightclub fires in history, claiming 492 lives, and the Mountain B Nightclub fire in Thailand in 2022 killed at least 25 people and injured many more in a tourist-frequented district.
These tragedies underline how rapidly fires can escalate in crowded bars and nightclubs when safety measures are insufficient. They serve as a stark reminder of the need for strict fire safety enforcement in venues popular with both tourists and locals.
(With inputs from various sources.)
When and where did the fire happen?
The fire broke out in the early hours of Thursday, around 1:30 am (00:30 GMT), at Le Constellation, a bar in the centre of the Crans-Montana ski resort in south-western Switzerland.
How many people were affected?
Swiss police have reported that around 40 people were killed and over 100 injured. The exact number of people in the bar at the time is unclear, and some are still unaccounted for.
What caused the fire?
The origin of the fire and how it spread remain under investigation. Authorities described it as an “embrasement généralisé”, a French firefighting term for when combustible gases ignite suddenly, similar to a flashover or backdraft.