The 77th Sapporo Snow Festival runs 4–11 February 2027 — eight days, Thursday to the following Thursday, which is a national holiday. The organising committee published the outline on 13 July 2026.
There is a catch worth knowing before you Google further: the festival’s own English page is stamped as 2019 information. It describes a festival from seven years ago. The current facts are published in Japanese first, and the English material catches up late or not at all. Everything below comes from the Japanese announcements.
The three venues, and what changes in 2027
| Venue | Where | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Odori | Odori Park, west blocks 1–11 | The main site: the giant snow sculptures |
| Tsudome | Sapporo Community Dome (“Tsudome”) | The family site: slides and snow play |
| Susukino | Ekimae-dori, Minami 4–6 | The ice-sculpture site in the nightlife district |
The Odori plan for 2027 is already drawn. Five giant snow sculptures — the festival’s signature — go up at 4, 5, 7, 8 and 10 chome. Block by block:
- 1-chome: winter attractions
- 2-chome: handed over to the Sapporo International Art Festival 2027 — an art-festival block inside the snow festival
- 3-chome: small snow sculptures
- 4, 5, 7, 8, 10-chome: the giant sculptures
- 6-chome and 9-chome: medium and small sculptures
- 11-chome: the International Snow Sculpture Contest, where overseas teams build in public during the festival
At the last festival the Odori sculptures were lit until 22:00 each night; treat that as the working expectation for 2027 until the committee posts hours.
The dates after the dates
One linked event sits outside the festival window: Sapporo Snow Sports Park 2027 runs 12–14 February 2027 at the Daiwa House Premist Dome — the three days immediately after the main festival closes. If your flights land you in Sapporo on the 12th, you have missed the snow sculptures but not the snow.
What 2026 tells you about 2027
The 2026 festival drew 2,539,000 visitors over its eight days, per the committee’s own history page — up from 2,327,000 in 2025 and back above the pre-pandemic norm of roughly two million. The 2024 edition, the first full-scale one after the pandemic, pulled 2,389,000.
Two practical readings. First, the festival is not shrinking, so the hotel compression around it is not either — rooms in central Sapporo for festival week are the scarcest and most expensive of the city’s year. Second, the crowd is spread across three venues and eight days: the difference between a miserable visit and a fine one is usually timing within the day, not the day itself. The committee’s own guidance for years has been that mornings at Odori are the quiet hours.
The festival began in 1950, when local school students put six snow statues in Odori Park. Seventy-seven editions later the same park runs eleven blocks, but the structure is unchanged: free to enter, outdoors, and over in eight days whether you came or not.
How to decide
- Fix the dates first: 4–11 February 2027. Everything else — flights, hotels, an Otaru side trip — hangs off those eight days.
- Book central Sapporo accommodation now, not in January. With 2.5 million visitors compressed into eight days, festival-week rooms are the city’s tightest inventory of the year. And the 2027 festival sits almost exactly on Lunar New Year — New Year’s Day falls on 6 February 2027, inside the eight days — so the East Asian holiday crowd lands on top of the usual one.
- Landing on 12–14 February? The festival is over; the Snow Sports Park at the Premist Dome is what remains.
- Want the sculptures without the crush? Go to Odori in the morning; the evening illumination is the peak.
- Read the Japanese page, not the English one. The official English material is years out of date; the Japanese news list is where 2027 details — hours, sculpture themes, stage events — will appear first.
Official sources
- Festival committee — 2027 outline announcement: https://www.snowfes.com/news/948.html
- Festival committee — 2026 results and next dates: https://www.snowfes.com/news/946.html
- Festival committee — festival history and attendance: https://www.snowfes.com/about/history/
- Sapporo city tourism — festival overview: https://www.sapporo.travel/event/event-list/sapporo_snow_festival/
All figures and dates above were read from the official pages listed here on 18 August 2026. The 2027 dates, venue list and Odori block plan come from the Sapporo Snow Festival organising committee’s official announcement, and the attendance figures from the committee’s history page. The 22:00 illumination time is the city tourism site’s description of the most recent festival; 2027 operating hours had not been published at the time of writing.
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