Home » Journal » Sapporo Snow Festival 2027 Dates Announced: 4–11 February at Odori, Susukino and Tsudome

Festival News Published 2026-11-01

Sapporo Snow Festival 2027 Dates Announced: 4–11 February at Odori, Susukino and Tsudome

The organisers of the Sapporo Snow Festival have announced the dates for the 77th edition: Thursday 4 to Thursday 11 February 2027, eight days across the Odori, Susukino and Tsudome sites. Here is what is confirmed, and what it means for planning a trip.

Japan's biggest winter festival now has its dates. The Sapporo Snow Festival Executive Committee published the outline for the 77th festival on 13 July 2026: the Sapporo Snow Festival will run for eight days, from Thursday 4 February to Thursday 11 February 2027, at its three established sites — Odori, Susukino and Tsudome. The closing day, 11 February, is National Foundation Day, a public holiday in Japan, which means the festival ends with its busiest possible day.

The three sites

The Odori site is the one in the photographs: a line of snow and ice sculptures running about 1.5 kilometres through Odori Park, from Nishi 1-chome to Nishi 11-chome in the city centre. The committee's outline puts five large snow sculptures at its heart, flanked by medium and small works, citizen-built statues and an international snow sculpture contest at the far end. Across town, the Susukino site turns Ekimae-dori, between Minami 4-jo and Minami 6-jo, into an open-air gallery of ice carving in the middle of the entertainment district — best seen after dark, when the ice is lit. The third site, Tsudome (the Sapporo Community Dome), is the family one: giant snow slides and space to play in the snow rather than just look at it.

A festival that began with six statues

The Snow Festival is younger than it looks. It began in 1950, when local high-school students built six snow statues in Odori Park; the Self-Defense Forces later took on the engineering of the giant works, and the event grew into one of the largest winter festivals in the world, drawing around two million visitors in a typical year. Tens of thousands of tonnes of snow are trucked into the city centre each winter to build sculptures that can stand fifteen metres tall — full-scale buildings, stages for concerts, and characters from whatever Japan was watching that year. Everything is demolished within days of the closing ceremony, which is rather the point: the city builds a second city out of snow, and lets it melt.

Planning around 4–11 February

Eight days sounds generous, but the shape of the week matters. The two weekends days — Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 February — and the closing public holiday on Thursday 11 will be the most crowded; the opening days, Thursday 4 and Friday 5, are the connoisseur's choice. Hotel rooms in central Sapporo sell out for festival week regardless, so if the 2027 dates have settled your plans, book early and treat the booking as part of the announcement. A partner event, Sapporo Snow Sports Park, follows at the dome stadium from 12 to 14 February, just after the main festival ends.

Make a week of it: Otaru's Snow Light Path

If you can stay past the weekend, Sapporo has a gentle neighbour. The port city of Otaru, about forty minutes away by train along the coast, holds its Snow Light Path during the same week — in 2027 it runs from 6 to 13 February, overlapping the Snow Festival from its second day. Where Sapporo builds monuments, Otaru lights candles: snow lanterns and glowing glass floats line the canal and the old railway track at dusk, and the whole town feels hand-made after Sapporo's grand scale. The two festivals combine easily in one trip — the big sculptures by day, the canal lights by night — and the overlap is one of the happy accidents of the 2027 calendar.

What is still to come

An outline is not a programme. The committee publishes details in stages — sculpture subjects, stage events and illumination hours will follow, with the fuller picture expected closer to the season — so the official website is the place to re-check before you travel. Our own Sapporo Snow Festival page keeps the basics and the official links together, and if a Hokkaido trip grows into a longer winter tour, this guide's February calendar lists 43 festivals across Japan in the same month — including Otaru's Snow Light Path season in Sapporo's neighbouring port city.

Seventy-seven editions in, the announcement itself has become a small ritual of the Japanese summer: in the hottest month of the year, Sapporo calmly tells the world exactly when it will be coldest, and proudest of it.

Sources

This article was written for this guide from the sources above. Festival schedules change — the festival's own announcements are the authoritative source.

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