SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
Late January · Boulder, Colorado · Eleven Days · Since 1978 · Film
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Arranged by the Court
- Dates21 to 31 January 2027
- WhereBoulder
- DressCountry attire
- AdmissionOpen to the public
- The weatherIn January Boulder reaches about 47°F by day and 22°F at night, and rain or snow falls on about one day in five.
- The tableThe Court dines afterwards at Frasca Food and Wine, 1738 Pearl St, Boulder (frascafoodandwine.com).
- Of noteThe premieres run from Thursday 21 to Tuesday 26 January, and every venue lies within about two miles.
- In companyA member who means to go says so to the Secretary, and the Court seats its members together where the engagement allows.RSVP tells the Secretary that a member means to attend. Send passes the engagement’s name, its date and the address of its page to whomever the reader chooses, or, on a computer, copies the address; the Court itself sends and keeps nothing.RSVP
Sundance is eleven days of independent film at the end of January, and from 2027 it is held in Boulder, Colorado. It ran in Park City, Utah, for forty-five years before that.
Some eighty-five thousand people come. What premieres here reaches everybody else some months later.
The Move
Park City held its last Sundance in January 2026.
The festival had outgrown the town. A ski resort of eight thousand cannot absorb eighty-five thousand visitors without the traffic on Main Street becoming the thing everyone talks about, and the theatres there were shrinking rather than growing. Boulder won a bidding contest against several cities, Park City among them, with thirty-four million dollars of tax incentives across ten years.
Screenings are spread across the town: a theatre on the main street, two school auditoriums, a chautauqua hall, and several rooms on the university campus.
There is a symmetry nobody planned. Robert Redford, who founded the thing, was a student at Colorado in the mid-fifties. He died in September 2025, a few months before the last Park City edition.
The History
It began in Salt Lake City in September 1978 as the Utah/US Film Festival, an initiative of the state film commission to draw film-makers to Utah. Redford chaired the board.
It lost money for two years. In 1980 Sydney Pollack suggested moving it to a ski resort in winter, on the theory that people would come for the snow and stay for the films. He was right.
The Sundance Institute took over the running of it in 1984, and the name changed in 1991.
What came out of it: Sex, Lies and Videotape. Reservoir Dogs. Napoleon Dynamite. Little Miss Sunshine. The early careers of Soderbergh, Tarantino, Coogler and Zhao.
What to Know
The first six days hold the world premieres. What follows is repeat screenings, by which point the industry has gone home.
Passes and packages go on sale in the autumn, and the programme is not announced until December. Nobody knows what they are buying tickets to when they buy them, which is rather the point.
The gala falls on the first Friday.
The mistake is going for the famous faces. They are there for two days and they are in rooms you are not in. The reason to go is that you will see six films nobody has an opinion about yet, and form your own before anyone tells you what to think.
Questions
When is the Sundance Film Festival in 2027?
The 2027 Sundance Film Festival runs from 21 to 31 January in Boulder, Colorado. World premieres are held from Thursday 21 to Tuesday 26 January, with further screenings until the close, and the festival gala is on Friday 22 January. An online festival runs from 28 to 31 January, and the awards are announced on Friday 29 January.
How do you get tickets to Sundance?
Everything is bought online through a Festival account. Passes give unlimited access within a set period; ticket packages hold up to ten screenings, chosen before single tickets go on sale. Passes and packages go on sale each October, members and donors first, and single tickets in early January.
How much are Sundance tickets?
As of October 2026, the Festival lists for 2027 a Full Festival Ticket Package of ten in-person screenings at $925, an Encore package at $675 and a Second Half package at $450, fees included. A single film ticket costs $37, in person or online, and the Online Festival Pass $825.
Can anyone go to Sundance?
Yes. The festival is open to the public, and anyone with a Festival account may buy a pass, a package or a single ticket. Enrolled students of any age and young adults aged 18 to 25 may register for Ignite discounted tickets, limited to two a screening; public registration for 2027 opens on 8 December 2026.
Is there a dress code at Sundance?
The Sundance Institute publishes no dress code for festivalgoers. The Court wears country attire.
Where are the Sundance screenings in Boulder?
The venues lie within about two miles: Macky Auditorium, the Roe Green Theatre and Muenzinger Auditorium on the University of Colorado campus; Boulder High School and Casey Middle School; the Boulder Theater, eTown Hall and the Canyon Theater near Pearl Street; Chautauqua Auditorium; and the Dairy Arts Center. Press and industry screenings are at Cinemark Century.
The Court
Sundance is not the Court’s own. Passes, tickets to premieres and places at the gala are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay, and the table afterwards. The first Boulder year is untested, and the Court will report on it.
How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.
- II · Main Street, Park City, © Isaac Hale, Deseret News
- IV · Opening Night, © Jemal Countess
- V · Park City at Night, © Jonathan Hickerson / Sundance Institute
Set down September MMXXVI · Revised October MMXXVI
The Gazette: the engagements of the coming weeks, by email, once a week.