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2027 edition🇨🇳 HarbinArt & Spectacle

Harbin Ice & Snow Festival

A city built out of river ice and lit from inside.

Dates

5 January – 28 February 2027

Location

Heilongjiang, China

Duration

56 days

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The story

What it is, and why it matters

Category: Art & Spectacle
Tradition: Secular & Civic
Attendance: 18 million per season
Region: Harbin, Heilongjiang
UNESCO: Not listed

IceLEDWinter

Blocks cut from the frozen Songhua river are stacked into buildings, then backlit with LEDs. At night the whole site glows and the temperature is minus thirty.

The festival has run since 1963 as a lantern show, and since 1985 in its current form. Ice and Snow World — the main site — is built from scratch each December and dismantled in late February, using around 200,000 cubic metres of ice.

Sun Island holds the snow sculpture exhibition, which is more figurative and less architectural. Zhaolin Park does the traditional ice lanterns, lit from inside with candles as well as LEDs.

Countdown to 2027

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Traditions

What actually happens

Ice Lantern Art Fair — Zhaolin Park's carved and internally lit blocks. Ice and Snow World — full-scale buildings, slides and towers, lit at night.

01Ice Lantern Art Fair — Zhaolin Park's carved and internally lit blocks.
02Ice and Snow World — full-scale buildings, slides and towers, lit at night.
03Snow Sculpture Expo — figurative carving on Sun Island.
04Swimming in the Songhua — the winter swimming club, every single morning.

Food

The table, widened

Guo bao rou, borscht-influenced Harbin red sausage, and sugar-coated hawthorn on a stick.

01Guo bao rou, borscht-influenced Harbin red sausage, and sugar-coated hawthorn on a stick.
02Hot pot and lamb skewers, sold from stalls that are themselves ice structures.

Music

Sound of the crowd

Fireworks, ice-sculpting competitions, and a very large light-and-sound show on the main site. The swimming club has its own brass band, which plays at dawn.

Religion

Why this date

None. This is a municipal tourism festival created in the 1960s, and one of the clearest cases of a state successfully inventing a tradition — Harbin's Russian-built cityscape supplies the aesthetic, the festival supplies the reason to visit.

History

How it survived

Started as a lantern exhibition in 1963 and interrupted during the Cultural Revolution. Reinstated in 1985, it became the model for every Chinese ice festival since, including the Sapporo and Quebec winter carnivals' later collaborations.

Gallery

Frames from the field

7 images · Harbin · 2027

Timeline

How it got here

1963
Lantern show
The first ice lantern exhibition is staged in Zhaolin Park.
1985
Modern form
The festival is reinstated with ice architecture on the Songhua river.
2001
Snow expo
Sun Island adds a dedicated snow sculpture exhibition.
Today
Two months
January and February, with roughly 18 million visitors a season.

Travel & practical