Sapporo Snow Festival: 2027 Dates, the Three Sites, and How It Gets Built

1. Dates, sites and what they cost

The 77th Sapporo Snow Festival runs from Thursday 4 February to Thursday 11 February 2027, a public holiday, across eight days. Odori, Tsudome and Susukino all run for the same period and none of them charges admission.

Eight days sounds brief until you learn that preparation starts the previous September. And once the festival closes, the sculptures are demolished the following morning. That timetable is what determines when you should turn up.

It has not always run eight days. The first edition lasted a single day, then two, then four, and in 1987 two more were added to make seven.

2. The three sites are three different events

They share a name, but what you see, when they open and how you get there all differ. With only one day available, the choice matters more than the itinerary.

The Susukino site is formally called Susukino Ice World. The pieces are carved from ice rather than snow, and 60 of them lined the street last time. It sits in the middle of the densest restaurant district in the city, which makes it a natural stop after dinner.

Tsudome is somewhere you play

This site is built for getting into the snow rather than looking at it. The organisers’ report on the last edition notes that weekends and holidays brought families, while weekdays brought primary school and kindergarten groups along with overseas visitors.

Tube slider tickets go out at 10:00 (1,500 of them), 12:00 (500) and 14:00 (500). For the first round each day the first 300 people simply queue, and numbered tickets start from the 301st. They are valid on the day of issue only.

The separate indoor hall means bad weather does not end the day with young children. The organisers do ask visitors to use the outdoor toilets where possible, as the ones inside the arena get heavily congested.

Susukino closes its street on a schedule

The Susukino site is a working road, so traffic is only stopped during set hours to let people walk out among the sculptures. Outside those hours you view them from the pavement.

3. What sits in each block at Odori

The Odori site stretches about 1.1km from West 1 to West 11, and each block has an assigned role. The layout for the 77th was published by the organisers in July 2026.

The five large sculptures land in blocks 4, 5, 7, 8 and 10. Rather than walking the full kilometre in one push, plan the route around those five blocks and take the rest as you pass them.

What was actually installed last time

Citizen sculptures are made by resident groups, with a public vote attached. The leading teams earn a place in the following year’s festival. Unlike the large sculptures, this section tracks whatever was popular that year.

The contest in block 11

The last edition was the 50th contest, with ten teams from around the world. Finland, competing for the 30th time, took first place for only the second time since 1988. Indonesia came second and Mongolia third.

4. Which days and hours are quieter

The organisers publish a day-by-day account of how the last edition went. Heavy snow on the Friday and the Sunday held attendance down, while the Saturday stayed clear all day and drew the heaviest crowds of the week.

Susukino cut its footprint to two thirds of the previous year and still saw attendance rise 35 percent. More people in less space, on a street that was never wide to begin with.

The hour changes what you see

Seeing both day and night means walking Odori twice. The same sculpture reads differently once the lights come up, and projection mapping only runs on specific blocks.

The first half and the second half show different things

The international contest in block 11 is not finished when the gates open. Going by the last edition’s schedule, the contest itself ran from 2 to 7 February, with carving taking place from the 3rd to the 6th.

So arriving in the first three days puts you in front of teams still cutting snow. Seeing all ten finished pieces side by side means coming after the ceremony, which falls in the second half of the festival.

5. A month of work behind one sculpture

A large snow sculpture stands four to five storeys high, and one of them alone takes around 600 truckloads of snow. Across the whole festival the figure is roughly 3,000 ten-tonne loads.

The schedule is fixed

Packing, settling, carving and finishing take about a month. Carving does not follow packing directly. There is a separate resting stage while the snow bonds and stabilises.

Where the snow comes from

It is hauled in from the city and its outskirts. The main collection points are Satoland, Moerenuma Park, Takino Cemetery, the Hoheikyo Dam and Futomi in Tobetsu. In years when snow has been short, crews have gone as far as the Shiribeshi and Sorachi districts to find it.

Who builds it

The Self-Defense Forces first took part in 1955, the sixth edition, with a ten-metre statue of the Virgin Mary at Odori West 4. From the 23rd edition in 1972 a formal cooperation agreement has covered snow transport and the construction of the large sculptures.

Members of the public have been able to join the large sculpture builds since the 38th edition in 1987, when a thousand people took part over the season. Families who have moved to Sapporo from elsewhere and international students now make up a growing share.

6. Why cleared street snow is never used

Sapporo spends the winter piling up cleared snow in heaps, and none of it goes into the sculptures. Clean snow is trucked in from designated sites instead, for one reason: safety.

The organisers cite their source. It is an experimental observation recorded in a study of snow mechanics compiled by the 11th Artillery Regiment of the JGSDF 11th Division.

Cleared snow carries soil, grit and whatever has been spread on the roads. Those impurities absorb heat and melt the mass from the inside, so a structure can look sound while its interior empties out. At four to five storeys, that is not a cosmetic problem.

Which is where the 3,000 truckloads comes from. However much snow sits nearby, none of it qualifies, so all of it has to be hauled from approved collection sites.

7. Why the ice is carved at night, and what has collapsed

The Susukino ice sculptures are carved by chefs. Around 200 of them, drawn from the chefs’ association and the Hokkaido ice sculpture society, work through three consecutive nights.

The night shift is not for atmosphere. The work goes better once the temperature drops below minus 10, and when it rises the carvers use dry ice to cool the blocks as they go.

Pieces have gone over

A gust brought an ice sculpture down during the 45th edition. The 46th responded with specific measures.

On the night of 10 February during that 46th edition, warm air did bring a sculpture down. The widened distance held, no visitors were affected, and the festival closed with no injuries.

8. The parts residents build themselves

What the Self-Defense Forces and the sculpture committee handle is five large works. The remaining hundred-plus pieces come from resident groups, students and volunteers. Of the 135 sculptures at Odori last time, 79 were citizen-built.

Citizen sculptures are allocated by ballot

Teams apply during an open call each November and places are drawn automatically. Those selected attend a technical workshop covering carving and, specifically, how to stop a sculpture collapsing. They also model their planned piece in clay before touching snow.

A public vote runs during the festival. The last edition was the tenth, held over four days across blocks 2 and 9, and the top three teams earn a place in the following year.

The high school section is built in a single day

On opening day at Tsudome, art club students build sculptures and are judged on the spot. Last time they worked from 08:00 to 14:30 with the public able to watch the whole process.

Visitors can work on the large sculptures

Public participation in the large sculpture builds opened at the 38th edition in 1987, when a thousand people took part across the season. Volunteers now work under the direction of the build teams, and the organisers report growing numbers of families who have relocated to Sapporo and international students.

Running costs now depend partly on donations

The last edition began collecting donations on site, taken by scanning a QR code with a phone, at five points.

The money goes towards securing snow, running the sites and training the next generation of builders. It is the kind of arrangement a festival ends up needing when it charges nothing at the gate and still has to move 3,000 truckloads of snow.

9. How cold it gets and what to bring

February in Sapporo averages minus 2.7, with daily lows averaging minus 6.2. The temperature is rarely the thing that ruins the day, though. The pavement is.

Those are Japan Meteorological Agency figures for the Sapporo station covering 1991 to 2020. Late January into early February is the coldest stretch of the year, and the festival sits in the middle of it.

Footwear decides the day

Roads freeze often enough that anything without a deep-cut winter sole will slide. The organisers lead their own advice with this point rather than with coats.

Leave the luggage behind

If you are heading to a site straight from the airport, there are staffed left-luggage counters: one inside Odori station on basement level 1 near the west Tozai Line gates, and one inside the tourist information centre in the west concourse at JR Sapporo. It is ¥1,000 per item regardless of size, and everything has to be collected the same day.

Phone batteries drain fast in the cold. Below freezing, a screen left on for long stretches can shut the handset down while charge remains, so keep a power bank in an inside pocket where it stays warm.

10. Getting to each site

Odori and Susukino are directly above subway stations. Tsudome is the one that needs planning. Odori and Susukino are a single stop apart and an easy walk in between.

Fitting all three into one day means putting Tsudome in the middle of it, because it closes at 16:00. Odori and Susukino stay open into the night, so they take the evening.

Getting back to the airport

Paying for the subway and buses works as described in our Suica and ICOCA guide.

11. The week the rooms disappear

Taiwan’s 2027 New Year holiday runs from 4 to 10 February, covering seven of the festival’s eight days. Taiwan has direct flights into Sapporo, and this particular holiday runs a full seven days.

Add the 1.93 million who came through Odori alone last time. Rooms go before flights do in this window, so once your dates are set, book accommodation first and fit the flights around it.

Where you stay changes how the days work

The Odori site runs straight through the middle of town, so a hotel inside the underground walkway network gets you close to the site without going outside. Sapporo Station, Odori and Susukino are all connected below ground.

The character of each district, along with the lodging tax, is set out in our Sapporo accommodation guide, including how the festival week changes the calculation.

12. What happens afterwards, and how it got here

The morning after the festival closes, the sculptures are demolished. The reason is collapse risk. Heavy machinery moves in and eight days of work becomes a heap of snow.

The organisers acknowledge that visitors arriving just after the festival are often disappointed to find those heaps. Odori Park has to return to being a public space by spring, so crews also haul snow out to speed up the thaw.

There is something to follow it, though. Sapporo Snow Sports Park 2027 runs from 12 to 14 February, three days, starting the day after the festival ends. Room rates have come back down by then, which makes extending the trip an option worth pricing.

It started on a snow dump

The first edition was a single day, 18 February 1950. The site was the block 7 plaza on Odori where residents dumped their cleared snow, and students from three high schools and two middle schools built six sculptures there. Alongside them ran square dancing, a singing contest and a dog race on a course laid out along the pavement.

Fifty thousand people turned up that day. Sapporo’s population at the time was 313,000.

Those first six sculptures were built from snow the students gathered nearby. The festival now hauls in 3,000 truckloads from across the city and its outskirts.

The name and the theme

In Japanese the festival’s name uses a character only for the word snow and hiragana for the rest, chosen because most of those involved wanted something simple and familiar to residents. The first edition was run as an experiment with no guarantee of a second, which is why no edition number was attached to it at the time.

A headline theme was first set for the 18th edition in 1967, built around the coming Sapporo Olympics and the Osaka World Expo. Themes changed annually after that until the 29th edition in 1978 settled on a permanent one, which is still in use today.

Where the contest came from

It began at the 25th edition in 1974 at Odori West 2, with six teams: Canada, France, South Korea, South Vietnam, the United States and Japan. Thirty-seven countries and territories have competed since.

Finland, who won the last edition, were competing for the 30th time. Portland, one of Sapporo’s sister cities, fields a team, as does Daejeon in South Korea.

If skiing is also on the itinerary, see our Japan ski and snowboard guide. If the month is still open, the best time to visit Japan compares the options.

Frequently asked questions

🗺️ Hokkaido guides →

Browse all our Japan guides →