Armada

A cult brand always attracts attention with eccentric appearances or market entries. Most recently, the original freeski brand Armada ventured into the snowboard business, which is definitely cool. Also new last season was the mid-season release of its own ski boot line. PowderGuide took a close look at the current top model in this line.

March ushers in spring - and to match, here's my favorite short film by Finn Bilous, which has just been released. We also go snow camping in the Swiss Alps and Manu Bernard presents his unique style of season recap in pure, simple art. The full review of the Nines is online with breathtaking footage and we get exciting insights into the development of a new Armada snowboard.

Piper Kunst steals the show. Armada's Team Movie makes history, Snowboard Heaven unfolds in Riksgränsen, the Japan Team Movie celebrates its 20th anniversary, a Nasa station appears in the Pyrenees - and finally there's a comedy hit.

From January 11 to 13, the Bolzano trade fair opened its doors for the 25th edition of Prowinter, the trade fair for outdoor and winter sports. With 230 exhibitors and around 400 brands, around 30 percent of which came from abroad, the event once again demonstrated just how international the industry has become. For the first time, exhibitors presented the latest products and trends for the 2026/27 winter season in two halls of the trade fair. We were on site and looked around for exciting innovations and current trends.

Old Man Winter is awakening - and October marks the start of the ski and snowboard film premiere season. Today we have an overview of what you can expect in the coming weeks: Which releases are coming up, which trailers are already out, and for some projects we only know the name so far. A few releases for new ski models are already online, as well as a fresh gear guide. We also take a quick look back at the season in the southern hemisphere: what happened in New Zealand and South America? It's good to be back - here's to a great start to the winter! There have already been a few highlights: look forward to Zeb, Nikolai and Trygg.

Parts of the Amer Sports Group (Atomic, Salomon and Armada) initiated a voluntary and precautionary recall of some touring bindings in October 2023.

ISPO, an interesting but also very exhausting trade fair, has been postponed from January to autumn. However, we at PowderGuide are still doing our best to provide you with information about the material for the upcoming season.

As was to be expected, there are hardly any innovations or groundbreaking new products in the ski sector for the 2017/18 season. Ultimately, almost all manufacturers are taking up the ideas from previous years and presenting them in the form of further expanded freetouring series. They try to differentiate themselves from one another through various lightweight construction methods and sometimes incorporate complex designs into the ski structure, or offer a cheaper price point or entry-level model. Flagship models are given an asymmetric sidecut with an asymmetric tip design, which is presumably a foretaste of the ski design in the coming years. As we saw last year, powder twin tips continue to die out for many major manufacturers. There are more and more directional, lightweight skis with center widths of 90-110mm or for "bad snow".