Event guide · Wed 28 Oct 2026
Sapporo Snow Festival 2027: dates, sites and how to plan it
The 2027 festival runs from Thursday 4 to Thursday 11 February at three sites in Sapporo: Odori Park, Susukino and Tsudome. What is confirmed now, what the organisers publish only in mid-December, and how to plan the week while rooms are still bookable.
The short answer: the Sapporo Snow Festival runs for eight days in 2027, from Thursday 4 February to Thursday 11 February, which is the National Foundation Day holiday. The organisers list three sites for 2027, all on the same dates: Odori Park in the centre of Sapporo, the Susukino ice site a short walk south, and Tsudome. The dates are confirmed on the festival's official site. The sculptures themselves are not: the detailed 2027 programme is published from mid-December, and until then the site pages still carry the 2026 edition, labelled as such. Plan the trip now, and check back in December for what will actually be standing in the park.
The three sites
| Site | Where | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| Odori Park | Nishi 1-chome to 11-chome, central Sapporo | The large snow sculptures. The Odori lighting runs until 22:00. |
| Susukino | Ekimae-dori, from Minami 4-jo to 6-jo | The ice sculptures, in the middle of the city's evening district. |
| Tsudome | The community dome, away from the city centre | The third site on the organisers' 2027 list, on the same 4 to 11 February dates. |
Odori and Susukino are an easy pair: one park, one street, and a walk between them. The festival began at Odori in 1950, when local school students built six snow statues in the park, and the large sculptures there are still the reason most people come. Susukino is the night site, ice lit up among the restaurants and bars. Tsudome sits apart from the other two, so treat it as its own outing rather than something to squeeze into the same evening.
What is not known yet
This is the part other guides tend to skip. The official site is clear that the pages for each site currently show the 2026 festival, and that the 2027 content is updated from mid-December 2026. So nobody outside the organising committee yet knows the subjects of the large snow sculptures, the stage programme or the contest entries for 2027. Any guide that describes them now is describing last year's festival. What you can settle today is everything around the sculptures: the dates, the flights, the room, and the rest of the week.
How to use the eight days
The festival opens on a Thursday and closes on a Thursday, and the closing day is a national holiday. Expect the two weekends and the final holiday to be the crowded end of the run, and the opening days, Thursday 4 and Friday 5 February, to be the calmer time to walk Odori before the crowds build. The sculptures are finished works from the first morning; there is no reason to wait for the last days unless the holiday is the only time you can travel.
Two more Hokkaido winter events overlap the festival almost exactly, and both have confirmed dates on our calendar. The Otaru Snow Light Path, snow candles and lanterns along the Otaru Canal and the old Temiya railway line, runs from 6 to 13 February. The Asahikawa Winter Festival, with its large snow sculpture stage and ice sculptures in the city centre, runs from 6 to 11 February. A week based in Sapporo from 6 February can hold all three.
Where to stay
Stay central. The advice on our where to stay page for the festival is built on the two city sites: Odori Park and Susukino are both evening places as much as daytime ones, and the Odori lighting runs until 22:00, so a central base turns the festival into a walk home rather than a journey at the end of a cold night. Sapporo's hotel search and the district notes are on that page, and the wider choices are on the hotels page. Festival week is the week the whole city travels, so the room is the booking to make first, while the choice is still yours.
Getting there
New Chitose is the airport for Sapporo and Hokkaido, and both city sites sit in the centre of town, so the last leg is a city journey rather than an expedition. The full airport and rail picture is on our getting there page. If the trip is a ski trip as well, our guide to the 2026-27 ski season opening dates has the Hokkaido resorts' planned dates, and the snow season page collects every snow event on the calendar, this festival included.
The festival's own page on this site, with the dates, the official source and the planning module, is the Sapporo Snow Festival listing.
Sources: Sapporo Snow Festival official site (snowfes.com), homepage listing the 2027 edition at the Odori, Tsudome and Susukino sites from 4 to 11 February 2027, and the Odori site page (period 4 to 11 February 2027, lighting until 22:00, with the note that the detailed content shown is the 2026 edition and 2027 content is updated from mid-December 2026); the Japan What's On dataset for the Otaru Snow Light Path and Asahikawa Winter Festival dates, each checked against its official source. Checked 27 October 2026. The 2027 programme details are the organisers' to publish, in December.
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