Seoul winter festivals 2026/27: lanterns, light gates, a 1,000 won rink and the ice fishing day trip

Seoul in winter is cold in a way that gets into your coat, and the city's answer is not to hide from it. Every December the old centre is strung with light: lanterns on the stream, a media facade on the great gate, a market on the square, an ice rink in front of City Hall that costs about a bus fare. Most of it is free, and all of it is walkable in a single evening if you dress for it. This is the 2026/27 season in the order to do it, plus the one January day trip every winter visitor should make. One date note: the festival's own site now lists the opening on Friday 11 December, a week later than the first city announcement, so plan around the 11th, not the 4th you may see in older guides, including, until we update it, our own listing.

The umbrella: Seoul Winter Festival, 11 December to 31 January

The Seoul Winter Festival, the programme long known as Seoul Winter Festa, runs for 52 days from Friday 11 December 2026 to Sunday 31 January 2027, across seven locations in the old centre: Gwanghwamun Square, Cheonggyecheon stream, Seoul Plaza, the DDP in Dongdaemun, Bosingak bell pavilion, and the streams and squares around them. Our Seoul Winter Festa listing tracks the programme as the city publishes it. Under that one umbrella sit the four things below, and the trick is simply geography: gate, square, stream and rink are all within a fifteen minute walk of each other, so a winter evening in Seoul plans itself.

Seoul Light Gwanghwamun and the Gwanghwamun Market, 11 December to 10 January

Gwanghwamun, the great southern gate of Gyeongbokgung Palace, becomes a screen. Seoul Light Gwanghwamun projects a media facade across the gate and fills the square below with light sculpture, nightly from Friday 11 December to Sunday 10 January. In front of it, the Gwanghwamun Market spreads Christmas stalls across the square for the same dates: food, decorations, gifts, and the European style market atmosphere Seoul has decided, correctly, that it does very well. The market's earlier closing is the planning point in this whole guide: come in January and the lanterns are still up, but the market and the gate show end on the 10th. If you can only have one weekend, take one between Christmas and the 10th of January and you get everything at once.

The Seoul Lantern Festival, Cheonggyecheon, 11 December to 31 January

The heart of the season is below street level. The Seoul Lantern Festival, running since 2009, lines the sunken Cheonggyecheon stream with illuminated lantern sculptures: paper and silk figures, historical scenes, animals, whole glowing tableaux reflected in the water. This year it runs the full length of the festival, 11 December to 31 January, the longest run in its history. Walk it from Cheonggye Plaza downstream in the early evening, before the weekend crowds peak, and come back up at street level past the food stalls of Gwangjang Market, which sits a short walk east and is the correct way to end a cold night: a mung bean pancake eaten standing up, straight off the griddle.

The palaces and the stream after dark are also the one part of the season that rewards a guide, because the night opening hours and the stories do not explain themselves. The night tour wired on our listings walks the palace quarter, Cheonggyecheon and the DDP in one evening.

Book the Seoul night tour: palace, Cheonggyecheon and DDPvia Viator · affiliate link

Seoul Light DDP and the Seoul Plaza ice rink

Two more pieces complete the centre. At the DDP, Zaha Hadid's silver spaceship in Dongdaemun, Seoul Light DDP runs its own media facade and Christmas town for the full season to 31 January, and pairs naturally with the Dongdaemun night shopping around it. And in front of City Hall, the Seoul Plaza ice rink opens on Friday 18 December and runs to Tuesday 9 February 2027, the longest lived piece of the whole festival. Last season an hour on the ice, skates included, cost 1,000 won, a price the city holds as a matter of pride; this season's price had not been announced when this guide was written, but nobody expects the tradition to break. Book the rink online when booking opens, because weekend slots go first, and go on a weekday evening if you want room to actually skate.

New Year's Eve: the bell at Bosingak

Seoul's midnight is not fireworks first; it is a bell. On the night of Thursday 31 December, the crowd gathers at Bosingak, the bell pavilion on Jongno a few minutes from Gwanghwamun Square, for the traditional New Year bell ringing, with the Winter Festival staging its countdown around the square. It is cold, crowded and genuinely moving, and it puts you a short walk from the lantern-lit stream for the first walk of 2027. Our Christmas and New Year in Korea guide covers the night in full, and the Seoul Winter Festa guide on this site walks the whole festival route in order.

The Jamsil alternative: Lotte World and Seoul Sky

The festival's second pole is across the river in Jamsil. Lotte World, the vast indoor theme park under its glass dome, runs its winter season regardless of the weather outside, which in a Seoul January is the whole argument: rides, parades and the ice rink inside, Magic Island and the illuminations around Seokchon Lake outside. Next door, Seoul Sky, the observatory near the top of the 123 storey Lotte World Tower, gives you the winter city from 478 metres on a clear cold day, and the lake's Luminarie light festival runs around Seokchon through the winter months. Do Jamsil as the daytime half of a festival day, and the old centre after dark.

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The garden that lights up: the Garden of Morning Calm

Seoul's prettiest winter night is an hour north east of the city. The Garden of Morning Calm, Korea's best loved arboretum in Gapyeong, dresses its gardens in lights for its winter Lighting Festival, and the standard Seoul day trip pairs it with Nami Island, the tree lined island in the Han River bend made famous by Winter Sonata, and the Gangchon rail bikes. In winter the order matters: island and rail bike in the daylight, the garden after dark, when the lights are the point. You can build it from trains and local buses, but it makes a long day of connections in the cold; the guided day trip exists precisely because of evenings like this.

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January's big day out: Hwacheon ice fishing

When the festivals of light end, the festivals of ice begin. The Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Festival, Saturday 9 to Sunday 31 January 2027, fills the frozen Hwacheoncheon stream in Gangwon province with thousands of anglers fishing for sancheoneo, mountain trout, through holes in the ice, plus bare hand fishing pools, ice sledding and a lantern lit main street after dark. It is one of the Korean government's designated global festivals and draws over a million visitors across its 23 days. The 2027 prices had not been published when this guide was written; last season foreign visitors fished for 10,000 won, and residents paid 15,000 won with a local produce voucher folded in. Check the organiser's site in December, and go on a weekday, because Saturdays on the ice are a contact sport. From Seoul it is a day trip, and the single most memorable thing most winter visitors do in Korea.

Dress for all of it as Seoulites do: thermal layers, a real coat, gloves you can use a phone in, and heat packs in your pockets, sold at every convenience store. Base yourself in Jongno, Myeongdong or around City Hall and the whole festival is your evening walk; base yourself in Jamsil and the tower is.

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Winter is when Seoul is most itself: bright, cold, crowded in the warm places and lit in the dark ones. Book the rink, the theme park and the garden trip, and let the lanterns, which cost nothing, carry the rest.

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