Schladming

A settlement on the site is first recorded in 1180 under the name Slaebnich, which is of Slavic origin. In the early Middle Ages the area, like the rest of Styria, was settled by Alpine Slavs and belonged to the principality of Carantania; during German colonisation it gradually took on a Germanic character while keeping Slavic traces in its culture and language. Town rights are first documented in 1322, the product of a flourishing mining industry in the Schladming Tauern, where up to 1,500 miners worked. Silver, lead and copper were mined, and in 1408 the mining judge Leonhard Egkelzain set down the miners' rights and customs in the Schladminger Bergbrief.

The Reformation brought disaster. When the miners joined the peasant uprisings of 1524–1526 against the Salzburg authorities, Schladming was almost completely destroyed in 1525 under Archduke Ferdinand I and lost its town rights, which were restored only in 1925. In 1629 the Salzburger Tor was built into the town's fortifications, and in 1661 a house for sick miners and the families of miners killed underground went up; it is now the town museum. Mining, which had shaped the town for centuries, was gradually given up during the 19th century.

Tourism took its place. Prince August of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha built a hunting lodge here in 1884, which the town bought in 1940 and uses as its town hall. The Planai joined the World Cup circuit in 1973, and Schladming hosted the Alpine World Ski Championships in 1982 and 2013 and the Special Olympics World Winter Games in 1993 and 2017. On 1 January 2015 the neighbouring municipalities of Pichl-Preunegg and Rohrmoos-Untertal were merged with the town, despite an unsuccessful challenge in the Constitutional Court.

Skiing is the town's identity. The Planai has been a regular World Cup venue since 1973, and since 1997 its men's slalom has been run at night as the Nightrace, which draws about 50,000 spectators each January and fills the town. The Special Olympics World Winter Games of 2017 were shared with Ramsau am Dachstein and Graz. In summer the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup, held here since 2004, brings a different crowd.

The mining past and the peasant wars of the Reformation remain part of local memory, told in the town museum, and Schladming has both a Catholic town parish church and a Protestant parish church. Since 1977 the Mid Kultur festival, formerly the Schladminger Musiksommer, has offered concerts and master classes in July and August.

An unusual visitor has come every year since the 1960s: the Schladming Winter School for Theoretical Physics, whose lecturers have included Murray Gell-Mann, Sheldon Glashow and Abdus Salam. Locals know the participants as the "Kernphysiker", the nuclear physicists. Schladming is twinned with Felletin in France, Wetzlar in Germany and Furano in Japan.

About 6,600 people lived in the enlarged municipality at the start of 2026, making it the second-largest town in the Liezen district. It sits in the upper Enns valley where the Talbach joins the river, framed by the Dachstein to the north and the Low Tauern to the south, and the merger of 2015 added the scattered settlements of Rohrmoos, Untertal and Pichl to the old town.

Tourism is the most important part of the economy: the 2014–15 tourist year recorded about 1.5 million overnight stays, 56 per cent of them in winter, organised through the Schladming–Dachstein holiday region and the Ski amadé network. The year divides into two seasons, with the ski months the busier, and the town is full of ski schools and sports shops. Since 1974 it has also been a sports-school town, with a ski commercial school and a boarding house for its pupils.

In winter the town is crowded with skiers from home and abroad, and the rhythm of the day follows the lifts, and the old town fills in the evenings. Summer brings walkers, climbers and mountain bikers.

A local speciality is Graukäse, a special kind of Steirerkas cheese, eaten on bread or with Nockerl. Traditional inns on the Hauptplatz serve regional Styrian cooking, and the mountain huts on the Planai and Hochwurzen feed skiers and hikers through the day; some take pride in serving higher-quality food rather than fast food.

Styria's wider kitchen is found here too. Kürbiskernöl, the oil pressed from roasted pumpkin seeds and protected in the EU as Steirisches Kürbiskernöl, dresses salads. Sterz, a crumbly dish such as Heidensterz made from buckwheat flour, was once typical poor people's food and is still often eaten by farmers and farm workers in Styria, and Verhackert, a spread of smoked, finely chopped bacon, is served on the cold platters of Styria's Buschenschanken alongside smoked meat, dried sausages and cheese.

The town has its own beer. The Schladminger brewery was founded in 1909 as the "Erste Alpenländische Volksbrauerei", and its beers are poured in the old town and on the slopes. As across Styria, Most, the fresh juice of apples or grapes, is made, and Sturm, a semi-fermented grape juice, is drunk after the grape harvest.