Festival du Voyageur runs February 12 to 21, 2027 at Whittier Park, 836 Rue St Joseph, in St. Boniface. Ten days, one park, and the Louis Riel Day long weekend sitting in the middle of it. We host guests through this festival every winter and get the same questions by message every February, so here is what we tell them.

Ten days in February, and which ones fill up

The festival opens on Friday February 12 and closes on Sunday February 21. Monday February 15 is Louis Riel Day, Manitoba's third-Monday-of-February holiday, and a good share of the province spends part of it in Whittier Park. That first long weekend, Friday through Monday, is the busiest stretch of the ten days. It is also the best one if you want the festival at full volume, with every tent staffed and every sculpture finished.

If you would rather see the place than the crowd, come on a weekday in the second week. Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons are quiet enough to walk the sculpture grounds without queuing behind anyone, and the interpreters at Fort Gibraltar have time to actually talk to you. The sculptures are the same sculptures. You just get them to yourself.

Plan around the light. The sun sets at about 5:42 p.m. on February 12 and about 5:57 p.m. by February 21. The carvings are lit after dark and they look completely different under the lights than they do at two in the afternoon, so an arrival around four gives you both versions in one ticket.

Fort Gibraltar, the sculptures, and the tents

Whittier Park holds a reconstructed fur trade post, Fort Gibraltar, standing next to the Red River with costumed interpreters working inside it. That is the part guests tend to underestimate. The interpreters are working rather than posing: cooking, blacksmithing, explaining how a voyageur brigade was actually provisioned. Children who were bored ten minutes earlier stop asking to leave.

Outside the fort, the international snow sculpture symposium brings carvers in to work blocks of snow into pieces that stay up for the run of the festival. Then there is the music. Fiddle and accordion in the heated tents, Franco-Manitoban and Métis acts alongside touring ones, and the shouted "Hé-Ho!" the festival takes its web address from.

Dress for standing still outdoors, not for walking. That is the mistake we see most often. People dress as though they will be moving the whole time, then spend twenty minutes watching a carver and lose their feet. Boots rated colder than you think you need, and something over your face for the walk between tents.

Tickets, and what they cost last year

Tickets are sold by the day and by the pass, and the clock matters: a day ticket covers 10 a.m. to midnight, an evening ticket starts at 6 p.m., and there is a combined day-plus-evening option. You can buy online at heho.ca, in person at the festival office at 233 Provencher Boulevard, or at the box office at the park if tickets are still available for that day. Some days do sell out, so the park gate is the least reliable of the three.

For 2026 the festival charged $110 for a full-festival adult Voyageur Pass, $75 for teens and seniors, $30 for ages six to twelve, and nothing for five and under, before tax and fees. A weekend pass was $75 for an adult, and single days ran between $30 and $40 depending on which day you picked. Treat those as the shape of the pricing rather than the 2027 numbers.

The site is cashless. Tickets and everything at the bars go on card, so a guest who brought cash for the weekend will be the one holding up the line.

Before you go: The festival sets its 2027 prices, on-sale date and nightly programme closer to February, and busy days sell out. Confirm at heho.ca before you book a flight around a particular night.

Getting there without circling for parking

Parking at Whittier Park is the weak point. The lot at the park costs $10 and fills early on the long weekend; accessible spots exist but are not free. The better move is one of the free lots that the festival shuttle serves, at the Université de Saint-Boniface and at Centre LaVérendrye. The shuttle starts half an hour before the gates open and runs until the park closes, which covers the whole evening. There is also free parking at the Caisse Financial Group building at 205 Provencher Boulevard, but no shuttle picks up there, so you walk from it.

Walking in is genuinely pleasant if you are already downtown. Provencher Boulevard runs east from the Esplanade Riel into the French Quarter, and the park is roughly twenty minutes on foot from the St. Boniface end of the bridge. In February that walk is a commitment, so judge it by the forecast on the day.

Where to stay for Festival du Voyageur

Our house is in Crescentwood, west of the Red River and a short way off Corydon Avenue. Whittier Park is on the other side of the river in St. Boniface, about a twenty-minute drive outside festival traffic, or a cab or rideshare if you plan to drink. Nobody should be driving back from an evening ticket if they have been at the bars.

The practical reason to book early is that the opening weekend is a provincial holiday. Whole-home stays across Winnipeg go first for Friday February 12 to Monday February 15, 2027, and in our experience they go months out. If the long weekend is the part you want, treat accommodation as the thing you book first and the tickets as the thing you book second.

You can see dates and rates for the house on our Airbnb listing. If you are building a longer winter trip around it, the river trail at The Forks and the snow maze south of the city are both running in the same weeks.