As a rule, warm-blooded Southerners don’t take well to cold-weather temperatures. But winter is coming, so instead of fighting it this year, consider bundling up and braving it at one of these action-packed winter festivals that celebrate the season. From Norway to Georgia’s Golden Isles and plenty of places in between, here are 10 winter festivals worth freezing for.
Québec Winter Carnival
Referred to simply as Carnaval by locals, this annual 10-day festival in Québec City is now in its 71st year, with roots dating to the 1890s. Billing itself as “the world’s largest winter carnival,” events take place outdoors, including the concerts. The 2025 lineup features a Hip Hop Evening with Souldia and Eman, the Unity Electro Festival with Habstrakt, Ben Willo and TomDūno, and the Franco Evening featuring Sara Dufour and David Pineau. Other highlights are parades taking place day and night, dance parties, masquerade balls, plus the opening and closing ceremonies at the Ice Palace.
Feb. 7-16. Passes $25 until Jan. 12, $39 after. Québec City, Québec, Canada. 866-422-7628, carnaval.qc.ca/en.
Credit: Québec Winter Carnival
Credit: Québec Winter Carnival
Bear Lake Monster Winter Fest
Straddling the border of Utah and Idaho, Bear Lake has been called the “Caribbean of the Rockies” because of its turquoise water and sandy beaches. Mainly a summertime destination for tourists, it also beckons visitors for a few days each January to experience this fest named for the mythical creature that supposedly calls the lake home. A highlight is the Cisco Disco, an event in which participants use nets to catch the Bonneville cisco, a small whitefish unique to the lake. A grand fish fry follows. Other events include the Monster Plunge, a cardboard boat regatta, chili cook-off and the opportunity to try multiple winter sports for free.
Jan. 24-26. Admission and venues vary. Garden City, Utah. 970-213-2850, bearlakemonsterwinterfest.com.
Holidays at Old Salem
The Salem part of Winston-Salem contains a historic district called Old Salem, originally settled by members of the Moravian Church in the 1760s. Each November and December the restored 18-century village, now a living history museum, brings to life the Moravian holiday heritage. Interpreters in period garb provide tours of the grounds and gardens, offer craft and trade demonstrations and give talks on how the settlers blended their traditions with those of African slaves, Cherokee tribes and Colonial settlers. A popular stop in the village is the Winkler Bakery for sugar cake, Moravian lovefeast buns and cookies. On Friday and Saturday evenings during the season, lantern-lit tours are offered of historic buildings where a nighttime Christmas can be experienced as it would have occurred in the 1800s.
Runs through Dec. 28. $40 and up. 900 Old Salem Road, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. 336-721-7350, oldsalem.org/holidays.
Credit: Pure Michigan
Credit: Pure Michigan
World of Winter
Every winter Grand Rapids, Michigan, transforms into a spectacle of art installations and performances that make up the World of Winter festival. The two-month-long event takes place outside in public spaces all over the downtown area with the most Instagrammable moments occurring after dark. Getting outside during the harshest time of the year is the point of the World of Winter, and the fest makes it worth the effort with dazzling interactive light displays, an ice arcade, a silent disco and circus entertainers in the Fire and Ice show, among many other events. All of the festival locations are accessible via public transit, though you will be walking a bit to reach certain locations, so bundle up and wear shoes with good traction.
Jan. 10-March 2. Free. Various locations in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. 616-719-4610, worldofwintergr.com.
Mardi Gras in the Mountains
The small resort town of Red River in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of northern New Mexico has loads of historic Western charm complete with saloons still sporting swinging doors. It seems an unlikely place to celebrate Mardi Gras, but the town does it right every year with local krewes putting on parades, staging grand balls and offering up plenty of Zydeco music and Cajun food. It’s a family-friendly affair by day with lots for the kids to see and do, including costume contests and bead collecting. But it’s adults-only at the drink-making contest at the Motherlode Saloon. Teams from local bars try to outdo one another in a vaudeville-like spectacle of mixology that’s as much about the sultry presentation of those shaking the cocktails as it is the drinks.
Feb. 27-March 4. Outdoor events free, admission varies by venue. Red River, New Mexico. 575-770-5795, mardigrasinthemountainsredriver.com.
Ice Music Festival Norway
In a high remote area between Oslo and Bergen in Norway there’s a music festival each winter unlike any other. The sold-out concerts take place inside igloos on a frozen lake and all the music is performed on instruments made of ice. It’s not for everyone. The tunes are mostly droning and harmonic, and it takes some effort to reach the site, but for those willing to witness music played on ephemeral instruments that won’t exist come springtime, this is the place. The lake is called Bergsjøen and the festival site is at the Bergsjøstølen lodge.
2025 dates and ticket info to be announced. $150 and up for accommodations at the Bergsjøstølen. +47 32 08 46 18, bergsjostolen.no. Festival website: www.icemusicfestivalnorway.no.
Credit: City of Sapporo
Credit: City of Sapporo
Sapporo Snow Festival
Next year marks the 75th year of Japan’s seven-day-long Sapporo Snow Festival, which attracts more than 2 million people from around the globe annually. A big draw is the International Snow Sculpture Contest where teams compete for the ultimate honor of Grand Champion. (Team Mongolia won last year’s top prize.) Ōdōri Park, a linear green space through the heart of Sapporo, is the fest’s main site to see the sculptures. It’s especially impressive at night when everything’s illuminated with light projections on the sculptures, some as large as buildings. Other festival sites are the Susukino entertainment district, where bars carved out of ice serve warm libations, and the Tsudome outside of town with lots of activities for kids during the daytime such as a snow maze, snow slides and a playground inside the dome.
Feb. 4-11. Free. Sapporo, Japan. 011-281-6400, www.snowfes.com.
Frozen Dead Guy Days
This late-winter fest in Estes Park, Colorado, wins the prize for quirkiness for its celebration of a cryogenically frozen man known as Grandpa Bredo from Norway. The odd story was a local news sensation in 1993 and the body is still entombed in Nederland, where the festival was held until 2022 when it became too big and moved to nearby Estes Park. It’s now held at the city’s event center and the Stanley Hotel, the fest’s official lodging partner famously known as the inspiration for Stephen King’s 1977 novel “The Shining.” The location may have changed but the events are still the same. Festivities include a parade of hearses, coffin races, a frozen T-shirt contest and more standard wintry fun such as a Polar plunge, ice breakdancing and a brain freeze contest.
March 14-16. $38 and up. Estes Park Events Complex, 1125 Rooftop Way, Estes Park, Colorado. 970-586-6104, frozendeadguydays.com.
Credit: John Berry
Credit: John Berry
Cold-Stunned Plunge
Jekyll Island’s version of a Polar plunge, the Cold-Stunned Plunge is a fundraising event for the Georgia Sea Turtle Center. The name refers to the hypothermia sea turtles can experience in frigid waters during the winter months; the center provides cold-stun recovery at its rehabilitation facility on the island, along with other rescue and education efforts. Plungers can register online in advance or the morning of the plunge at Jekyll Island Beach Village shopping center adjacent to the event site. Afterward, head to the Georgia Sea Turtle Center in the historic district for a tour and programs. The Cold-Stunned Plunge is part of the Holly Jolly Jekyll festivities between Nov. 29-Jan 5.
10:30 a.m. Nov. 30. $35 and up. Jekyll Island Beach Village, 31 Main St., Jekyll Island. 912-635-3636, www.jekyllisland.com
The Brainerd Jaycees Ice Fishing Extravaganza
People take ice fishing seriously in Minnesota and nowhere is this more apparent than at the Ice Fishing Extravaganza on Gull Lake outside of Brainerd (home of folklore hero Paul Bunyan and a prominent setting in the 1996 film “Fargo”). For one day each February the lake becomes the site of what organizers call “the largest charitable ice-fishing contest in the world.” After the national anthem is played at noon, a canon fires and 10,000 anglers take to the ice to drop their lines in pre-drilled holes to fish for sunfish, perch, tullibee and other species. More than $150,000 in cash and prizes will be awarded during the contest, at a raffle and at random giveaways throughout the event. A kickoff party takes place the night before the tournament with big-name live entertainment (unannounced at press time).
Feb. 1. $50 participation fee, no fee for spectators. Hole-in-the-Day Bay, Gull Lake, Brainerd, Minnesota. 800-950-9461, icefishing.org.
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