Harbin Ice Festival 2026-27: Dates, Tickets, Getting There

As of 10 October 2026, the Harbin Ice and Snow World hasn’t announced when its 28th season opens or what a ticket will cost. What the park did in the 2025-26 season is a better guide than any blog’s date: it opened on 17 December 2025, published that date only three days earlier, charged ¥328 for a standard adult ticket (about $49 or £37) after an opening week at ¥298, and shut for good on 21 February 2026 when a warm spell melted its sculptures. So a January trip is the safe bet whatever the date turns out to be, and the way the season ended is the best argument for how to buy your ticket.

The 28th season: no date yet, and why that’s normal

The park’s own site still carries the 27th season’s ticket policy, and its news page has no opening date, price list or sales start for the 28th. The closest thing is a notice of 10 October about a promotion tour. On 12 October the Heilongjiang Ice and Snow Tourism Promotion Association presents the 2026-27 season in Guangzhou, then goes on to Xiamen, Chongqing, Jinan, Shanghai and Ningbo, with the park among the exhibitors. The notice gives no dates for the park.

Two earlier seasons show a pattern. The 26th opened on 21 December 2024, the day the park posted its guide for foreign visitors. The 27th opened at 10:00 on 17 December 2025, and the notice with its date and prices went out on 14 December. So the second half of December is the working assumption, and a date confirmed a few days ahead is how this park does it, not a sign of trouble. Two seasons are a thin record, so treat it as a habit rather than a rule.

What that means for a booking: a trip planned for January sits inside the season whatever the date turns out to be. All three of the city’s ice venues had opened by 31 December 2025, and the park’s closing came in the third week of February (more on that below).

The festival is a programme; the parks are the places

A search for “Harbin ice festival” mixes two things. The China Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival is a programme of events. It first opened on 5 January 1985 in Zhaolin Park and became an international festival in 2001. The 42nd edition opened on 5 January 2026 inside the Ice and Snow World, with more than 200 events and ten ice-and-snow tourism routes, according to Heilongjiang Daily. The places people actually queue for open earlier, and each sells its own ticket.

The Sun Island expo covered 1.5 million square metres, with 120,000 cubic metres of snow arranged in seven themed zones and two extension areas. Zhaolin Park’s lantern fair reached its 52nd edition in 2025-26, and it has been free since December 2018; the 2025-26 edition showed more than 310 ice and snow works, and the 2024-25 edition drew 1.443 million visitors. If you want one ice walk whose price can’t change, it’s that one. The Ice and Snow World is the large, ticketed one, and the rest of this page is mostly about it. For a day in the old town that fits around either, our Harbin city guide has the walking routes.

Ice and Snow World tickets: ¥328, ¥240 and who gets in free

The park’s ticket policy for the 27th season lists a standard adult ticket at ¥328 (about $49 or £37) and a concession at ¥240 (about $36 or £27). The opening week was cheaper: ¥298 from 17 to 23 December 2025, then ¥328 from 24 December. Whether the 28th season repeats either figure hasn’t been said.

The concession covers children over 6 years old or over 1.2 metres tall, full-time students aged 24 or under at undergraduate level or below, disabled visitors, and residents of Harbin. Free entry goes to children up to 6 years old or up to 1.2 metres (with a paying adult), anyone aged 65 or over, serving and retired military, firefighters, police, journalists with a Chinese press card, members of the Chinese photographers’ association, and guides leading a group. Apart from children and guides, free visitors have to reserve a free ticket in the park’s WeChat shop, where the park caps them at 2,000 a day. The age and height cut-offs for children overlap, so if yours is near either line, ask at the hall.

The catch for a foreign visitor is the paperwork: the policy names Chinese ID cards, household registers, soldier’s and police certificates. It doesn’t spell out whether a passport, or a student card from abroad, earns the concession or the age-65 entry at the gate. Ask at the ticket hall or on the park’s hotline, 400-639-1999 (a number you can dial once you’re in China), before you assume it does, and expect to pay the full price.

Buying from outside China

The park posted a guide for foreign visitors on the day its 26th season opened, 21 December 2024. It names three routes, all on a passport or a foreign permanent-residence card:

• In China: the park’s official WeChat account, Ctrip, Douyin or Meituan.
• Still abroad: the Trip.com app, which the park calls Ctrip Trip.
• At the park: the self-service machines in the ticket hall, which take foreign currency, so you don’t need to change money first.

The 27th season’s opening notice listed advance sales on the WeChat account, Ctrip, Douyin, Meituan and Alipay. The guide is the older document, and we didn’t find a reissue for the 27th season, so confirm the list when sales open. If you’ll pay inside an app with a foreign card, our guides to paying in China and the apps to install walk through linking it first.

21 February 2026: the day the weather won

On 19 February the park announced that temperatures had risen above freezing and that it would close on 20 and 21 February, reopening at 17:00 on 22 February with the adult ticket cut to ¥228 and the concession to ¥168. Two days later it dropped that plan. On 21 February the park said that temperatures on the 20th and 21st had broken historical extremes, that the sculptures were melting badly, and that the season was over.

Every ticket holder could claim a full refund through the channel they’d bought from, and anyone with a ticket for 20 to 28 February could, after refunding, enter the next season free on their own ID (the notice names the ID card; for a passport, ask the park). The week in question was the Spring Festival holiday, 15 to 23 February. The practical lesson for a buyer is to book through a platform you can still reach from home, since the refund went back the way the money came, and to treat a late-February date as a bet on the weather.

Inside the park, the indoor Dream Ice and Snow Hall reopened at 12:00 on 22 February with the zodiac figures, the ice piano, the steam train and the ice harp. The hall covers 23,800 square metres and runs through the year. In the park’s August 2026 notice, its indoor venues were open 10:00 to 20:00 from Monday to Thursday and 10:00 to 20:30 from Friday to Sunday, and its September and October promotions give the hall’s standard adult ticket as ¥268 (about $40 or £30) before discounts. Winter hours may differ, and the outdoor park’s ticket doesn’t obviously include it, so check what your ticket covers.

From the station, the airport or Central Street

The park is in Songbei District, north of the old town. Its own reference figures for the 2025-26 season are about 12 km and 25 minutes from Harbin Station, 13 km and 30 minutes from Harbin West, and 39 km and 50 minutes from Taiping airport. A taxi from Central Street is about ¥20 and from Daowai’s Chinese Baroque quarter about ¥26 (roughly $3 and $4). For the trains that get you to either station, see our Beijing to Harbin train guide.

By metro, the park’s page sends you on Line 2 from Harbin Station or Central Street. From Harbin West you take Line 3 to Zhujiang Road and change to Line 2, and from the east side Line 1 to Museum station and then Line 2. It gives 06:00 and 21:30 as reference first and last trains, which are worth checking against your plans if you stay for the evening lights. For the stations and the metro in more detail, the Harbin city guide covers both.

The sculptures are lit after dark, so most people go in the afternoon and stay into the evening; on a January evening that means hours outside in deep cold, often around -20°C, and our Harbin guide has what to wear.

On 29 January 2026 the park announced a free shuttle for ticket holders, running from the tourist distribution centre on Youyi Road, the Chinese Baroque quarter and the park’s west ticket hall, every half hour from noon. We don’t know whether it returns in winter 2026-27.

As for hours, the park opened at 10:00 on its first day, and for New Year’s Eve 2025 it announced 10:00 to 00:30 the next day. We didn’t find an ordinary closing time in a published notice, so read it off your ticket or the WeChat account on the day.

Next season’s Spring Festival comes earlier

Next season’s Spring Festival comes earlier than the last one: Chinese New Year 2027 falls in the first half of February, not in the third week, when the 2026 holiday overlapped the park’s last days. The State Council hadn’t set the 2027 break on 10 October 2026; our Chinese New Year 2027 page has the dates and what closes.