Why go
The Icehotel in Jukkasjärvi is built from the river it stands beside. Each winter, blocks cut from the frozen Torne are stacked into halls and suites, guests move in for the winter, and in spring the whole building melts back into the water. Because the artists change each year, the hotel you sleep in is one nobody will ever sleep in again. That is the point of going: not the cold, which you can find anywhere in Lapland, but a building that exists for a few months and then disappears.
The first version went up in 1989, when the snow, as the hotel puts it, lay heavy over Jukkasjärvi. The Torne is 520 km long. Blocks weighing up to two tons each are cut in spring and stored cold through the summer, so the next hotel is built from the previous year’s river. The build itself takes six weeks.
Kiruna is the practical base for a visit: it has the airport, the train station and most of the warm beds. Our Kiruna city guide covers the town itself.
What you will see
There are two hotels on the site, and it helps to know which one you are booking. The seasonal winter hotel, with its Art Suites and plainer Ice Rooms, is open December to April. Beside it stands a permanent building, ICEHOTEL 365, which has offered ice rooms all year since 2017 and is held at around minus five degrees inside even when the summer sun never sets. Warm accommodation, such as the Kaamos rooms and Arctic Cabins, is listed alongside the cold rooms on the room overview.
The suites are the draw. Each year the hotel receives around 150 design proposals from artists and picks around 15 to build. The result is a corridor of one-off rooms, some figurative, some abstract, all carved and lit on site. By day the suites double as an art exhibition that you can walk through on a day ticket; from 6 PM the hotel closes to the public and overnight guests get their rooms.
Sleeping on ice is simpler than it sounds. The cold rooms sit at around -5°C, and you are handed a sleeping bag rated to -25°C. Beds have mattresses, reindeer hides and pillows on top of the ice. You keep your bags and valuables in a warm building and walk over at night. The hotel itself suggests one night on ice and the rest of your stay in warm rooms, and recommends children are over seven before they sleep cold. Outside, the air can reach minus 30; snowmobile overalls, boots and gloves are lent to guests, so you need decent base layers rather than an expedition wardrobe.
The Icebar is part of the same complex, and the restaurant serves breakfast, lunch and dinner during the year-round season. The Riverside lobby and shop are listed as open 24 hours a day, and the venue’s hours page says check-in happens there while the main reception is closed.
Visiting: hours, admission, booking
Opening hours and day-ticket prices are in the facts box; they come from the venue and are checked on a fixed schedule. Two cautions. First, the hours currently published cover the period from 13 April to 30 November 2026, which is the year-round building’s season. The winter hotel, ICEHOTEL #37, opens on 11 December 2026 with a ceremony at 6.00 pm, and its hours and prices had not been posted at the time of writing. Check the venue’s tickets page again once December is close. Second, entrance to the hotel and the art exhibition is free for overnight guests, so a day ticket only matters if you are staying elsewhere. The whole site is cash-free.
For rooms, the homepage flags winter packages as available from 1 December. The hotel’s own seasons page says December and February are its busy months and that January, March or April are easier to book. If you want northern lights, the season starts in September, so an autumn visit to the year-round building avoids the deep-winter crowds. Midwinter temperatures in Jukkasjärvi can fall to -40°C; the spring months of March to early May run between -10 and +10°C with long daylight, which many people find the easier trip.
Warm-room check-in is from 3 PM; cold rooms open at 6 PM. Room prices are not published on the overview page, so budget from a live quote rather than from anything you read here.
Getting there
The hotel’s address is Marknadsvägen 63, 981 91 Jukkasjärvi, and the GPS reference it gives is 67.851066, 20.595230. Jukkasjärvi is a village of roughly 800 to 900 residents, depending on who is counting, and the local tourist office puts it about 18 km outside Kiruna. Plan for a short drive.
From Kiruna Airport the hotel says it is a 15-minute drive. The airport lies approximately 9 km from Kiruna centre, and it is served by an airport coach timed to flights, with tickets sold on board, plus regional buses; the airport’s bus page lists routes but no fares. From Kiruna train station, the hotel’s transfer bus or a taxi takes around 15 to 20 minutes. The hotel asks for transfer bookings before 3 pm the day before you arrive.
In winter there is a slower option: a dog-sled transfer from Kiruna that takes 75 minutes and runs December to April. Transfer prices load from the hotel’s booking system and are not reproduced here; ask when you book.
Nearby
Jukkasjärvi has more than the hotel. Its wooden church, described by the tourist office as the oldest in Lapland, dates from 1726 with parts from 1607; we cover it on the Jukkasjärvi church page. The Sámi Siida Márkanbáiki open-air museum is in the village too, and there are said to be more than 1,000 dogs here, most of them sled dogs.
Kiruna itself is mid-move because of the iron mine. The town church was rolled five kilometres to a plot between the cemetery and the new centre on 19 and 20 August 2025. The parish says it is closed and plans to reopen during 2027, but the mining company said in August 2026 that it was too early to name a date, so do not plan around it.
For a day trip, Abisko is 93 km north-west of Kiruna on the E10, just over an hour by car. The national park there was founded in 1909, and a cable car climbs Njullá to the Aurora Sky Station. See our Abisko National Park page before you go.