Welcome to Dark Season Blues 2024
– the world’s northernmost blues festival.
Dark Season Blues has since its inception also been called the Polar Night Festival. The festival is held every year at the end of October, at 78 degrees north in Longyearbyen, and marks the beginning of the dark season when daylight and the sun are about to leave Svalbard for four long winter months.
Dark Season Blues was organised for the first time in 2003 and started as a small intimate festival. The festival has grown over the years, and in 2024 the twentieth festival will be arranged with events spread over most of the venues in Longyearbyen.
The festival runs over 4 days, and includes concerts at several venues, blues lunches and blues dinners. There are also events in Gruve3, at school, in the church, and even the kindergarten is visited by our artists. It all ends on Sunday night with a blues jam where the audience can also play along with their blues hero.
The light at the beginning of dark season is very special in Svalbard. The twilight, also called the blue season, occurs when the sun is in a position below the horizon, and the blue light particles bend into the atmosphere and color the landscape in the Arctic blue. The comparison between the blue light and the blue music – Blues is easy, and it is the blue color enveloping Svalbard’s landscape that sets the scene for the festival and gives a unique atmosphere and inspiration.
Thanks to the small size of the settlement, artists, audiences and locals spend the whole weekend together. Here unforgettable memories are created, and many of our guests come back year after year.
We put our diligence into booking blues artists, and throughout the years have offered Longyearbyen’s population and visitors a range within the genre that is exciting, varied, high quality, and popular. The festival is based on volunteer work, and a dedicated crowd spends a lot of time at the festival. The volunteers are invaluable in being able to carry out the biggest event happening in Svalbard.
We thank everyone who makes the festival possible, residents, visitors, volunteers, artists and not least our sponsors and partners!
Longyearbyen Bluesklubb – organiser of Dark Season Blues.
Dark Season Blues is an environmental approved event.
