Concussion rules by body: each level writes its own.

The rules side by side

These are separate rules for separate settings. A World Cup racer, a US junior at a club race, a British athlete on a GB Snowsport licence and a recreational skier fall under different documents, and some also fall under a state or provincial law.

FIS (international federation)

FIS's Athlete Health Corner, launched by the FIS Athlete Health Unit on 1 May 2026, has a concussion page (read 24 October 2026). It says:

• Definition. Concussion is a traumatic brain injury that can follow a direct blow to the head or force passed to the head from elsewhere in the body.
• Removal. Anyone with a suspected concussion should be removed from play immediately.
• Return. Return to activity and sport is a stepwise process in which each stage lasts at least 24 hours and may take longer. This page does not describe the stages.
• Documents. The page lists the FIS Concussion Guidelines, updated in 2026 and dated 1 May 2026, the Sport Concussion Assessment Tool 6 (SCAT6) and the Concussion Recognition Tool 6 (CRT6), both dated 20 January 2026.

Two further points rest on search-result excerpts only and are unconfirmed. The FIS-hosted SCAT6 form is described as a tool for healthcare professionals assessing athletes aged 13 and over, with a Child SCAT6 for those 12 and under and the CRT6 for non-medical people, and as saying no athlete diagnosed with concussion should return to play on the day of injury. The FIS telemark competition rules of spring 2023 are described as saying a racer with a suspected concussion should not start without an in-date medical certificate of fitness to race; whether that edition is current was not checked.

Concussion rules inside the current FIS rule books for alpine, freestyle, snowboard, cross-country, ski jumping and Nordic combined were not read, and each discipline has its own book.

U.S. Ski & Snowboard (US national federation)

The federation's "Concussion Policy for Members", on a form dated 2018-19, covers athletes under 18:

• Removal. Any athlete under 18 suspected of a concussion or traumatic head injury is removed at once from any U.S. Ski & Snowboard sporting event, including sanctioned training, practice, camps, competitions and tryouts, by the Technical Delegate or member coach in charge.
• Clearance. The athlete may not return until cleared in writing by a qualified health care provider trained in concussion, who must certify a continuing-education course in concussion evaluation and management within the previous three years.
• Reporting. The removing official informs the federation's Competition Services, and the clearance must reach Competition Services before the athlete takes part again.
• Resources. The form recommends the CDC's HEADS UP concussion-awareness material.

The current policy may differ. The federation's current policy page returned an error. A search excerpt of it says all members, and parents of members under 18, must review and acknowledge the policy, that only minors are placed on membership hold pending clearance, and that an athlete of any age may be benched for a suspected concussion. A search excerpt of the 2025-2026 Event Organizer Handbook says the policy results from Utah law and applies in any state where a federation event takes place. Both are unconfirmed, and the 2018-19 form and the current page appear to differ on age. The current policy, not the 2018-19 form, is the one that applies, but its text could not be read for this site.

Alpine Canada

Alpine Canada's policy documents returned errors when the research tried to open them, so everything here is from search excerpts and unconfirmed. They describe a Concussion Safety Policy updated in May 2024, after a board-approved December 2022 version, organised around prevention, identification, treatment and safe return to ski racing, and requiring concussion training for staff.

GB Snowsport (British national federation)

GB Snowsport introduced head-injury protocols across all its disciplines, first for its World Class Programme athletes and coaches and then for every athlete competing on a GB Snowsport licence (news page undated, copyright 2021). Its Return-to-Snow Protocol requires:

• Adults: ten days of symptom-free testing and monitoring after a suspected concussion before full training and competition.
• Under-19s: at least 29 days, counted from a suspected concussion or from a fall or impact that was not assessed.

GB Snowsport says its Chief Medical Officer developed the protocols with specialists from the English Institute of Sport, and calls them the first head-injury protocols designed specifically for skiing and snowboarding; that is the body's own claim. No concussion policy from Snowsport England or Snowsport Scotland was found.

UK grassroots guidance (all sports)

The UK Concussion Guidelines for Non-Elite (Grassroots) Sport were first published in April 2023 and updated on 6 November 2024, coordinated by the Sport and Recreation Alliance with a drafting group of clinicians. Their core message is "If in doubt, sit them out". The 2024 update made clear they cover all grassroots participants, disabled people included. They are guidelines, not a law, and are not written for skiing in particular.

Laws, named only

• Ontario, Rowan's Law (Concussion Safety), 2018. Requires sport organisations to have athletes under 26, parents of athletes under 18, coaches, team trainers and officials confirm each year that they have reviewed Ontario's Concussion Awareness Resources, to have a Concussion Code of Conduct, and to keep a removal-from-sport and return-to-sport protocol. The Ontario page does not name skiing or snowboarding, and its phase dates were not confirmed.
• US state laws. Search excerpts of an NFL.com article, unconfirmed here, say Washington State's Zackery Lystedt Law, signed on 9 May 2009, was the first US youth-sports concussion law, that all 50 states had such laws by 2014, and that they vary, with some not covering recreational sport.

The laws themselves, not this page, say what they require. Whether a helmet changes concussion risk is on what helmets do and do not do.