Sundance has left Park City. Here is what that means for January.

If you have travelled to Park City in January before, you have planned around Sundance whether you meant to or not. That is over. The Sundance Institute announced that the festival's new home is Boulder, Colorado, from 2027, and the January 2026 festival was the last one held in Park City after forty years.

We are writing this down because a surprising amount of travel advice about Utah still assumes otherwise, and because the practical consequences are the opposite of what most people expect.

What actually changes

• Late January in Park City is now a ski week rather than a festival week. The town is busy because the snow is good, not because of a premiere.
• The scramble for lodging, restaurant tables and vehicles that used to cluster around ten days in January is gone. That window is now shaped by the ski calendar — which means Presidents' Day and the Christmas fortnight matter more than they did, and late January matters less.
• If you booked ground transport months ahead purely to beat the festival crowd, you no longer need to. If you are travelling on a holiday weekend, you still should.

One thing that has not changed

Sundance Mountain Resort is a different thing entirely, and it is going nowhere. It sits in Provo Canyon on the flank of Mount Timpanogos, about an hour south of the airport, and it is a year-round ski and summer resort. The festival took its name from the resort, not the other way round. We serve it as we always have.

It is an easy confusion and it has practical consequences — the two are ninety minutes apart and in different directions from the airport. If you are booking a car and you say Sundance, we will ask which one you mean.

What we changed on our side

Our peak-rate calendar no longer carries a Sundance window, because there is no longer a Sundance in Park City to carry one for. Every date we do charge a peak rate on is published on the rates page, and your quote names the window before you book.