The Amsterdam Light Festival Returns for its 14th Year
AMSTERDAM, NL — Every winter for the past fourteen years, the historic city of Amsterdam has been transformed into an open-air art gallery for a limited time. When we planned our winter visit to the Netherlands, the Amsterdam Light Festival was one of our most highly anticipated activities. The festival commissions installations from a diverse group of artists from around the world, which then go to become public displays throughout the city during the event. When the sun sets, these exhibits come to life with stunning lights, projections, colors and reflections.
The festival operates nightly from 5:00PM to at least 10:00PM, but some nights the displays may remain lit as late as 11:00PM. Edition 14 of the much-beloved Dutch tradition brought several new pieces to the canals, most of which lit at vijf uur on the dot; those that didn’t were more complex pieces that required lighting in phases, or projections which required time to calibrate before casting their first illusion. By 5:30, which is when we actually got moving at Amsterdam Centraal, all twenty-one of the displays were up and running. The overall experience amounts to between 3-5 miles (5-8 kilometers) and is an activity that can easily fill the entire evening - especially if you purchase the Foodwalk add-on, which includes brews and bites from several participating locations along the festival route.
How to Experience the Festival
There is no wrong way to experience the Amsterdam Light Festival - but there is an efficient way, a speedy way, a holistic way, and so on. Your options boil down to walking, biking or taking a canal boat. Regardless of how you choose to progress along the festival route, Our first recommendation is to purchase and download the official app for your phone, which itself is updated to a newer version ahead of each year’s event. The app will give you more details about the event, as well as a digital map that guides you to all the different light installations. What’s more, it provides information about each piece’s artist, the artist’s inspiration, a developmental history of the piece and fun facts about each of the pieces, all of which are available in multiple languages. During our 2025 visit, the cost of the app without any bells or whistles was €6.99 ($8.16).
Canal Boats - typically seen as the ‘premium’ experience - is by far the most efficient way to experience the festival pieces. Boat tours usually incur additional fees, but do ensure that you are able to see all of the art pieces before the lights go off. As we made our way through the city on foot, we found that some installations were designed to be seen from the water, while others were better experienced from the walking paths. The real advantages of a canal tour are getting off of your feet and having a professional tour guide, as well as making it around the city significantly faster. The disadvantage is that canal boats do not (cannot) stop in front of the art pieces, so your window to view each piece is relatively small. Your position on the canal boat itself likely determines whether this investment pays off.
Biking (or cycling) is another popular option, and a cheap alternative to walking for many locals who are already used to biking through streets of Amsterdam. In choosing the bike, your travel time between exhibits is shortened and you still get the benefit of taking your time to enjoy the sights. Bike rentals are available throughout the city if you are a traveler, but we would highly encourage booking a rental ahead of your visit. If you have never biked in Amsterdam before, we’ll also urge a bit of caution. Bikes are the primary form of transportation in the Netherlands, and traffic moves fast - so it’s important to mind traffic signals and lane instructions to avoid any nasty collisions.
Walking is the most cost-effective method, and the one we choose for our own visit. We wanted to maximize our time spent navigating the city and be able to spend more time looking at the art installations and taking in the city’s nighttime vibes. Despite having the official map in our pocket, we still managed to get a bit turned around at times; for this reason, patrons are able to purchase upgraded ‘walk’ experiences that include a tour guide. Thankfully, we always managed to get back on track thanks to the helpful locals.
The Kids Walk
As a special experience designed for younger visitors, the Kids Walk offers a child-friendly way to explore the Amsterdam Light Festival on foot, combining fun facts about the light artworks with quiz questions and a scavenger hunt that ends with a small prize. The experience can be completed as either the full walking route or a shorter half-route, making it flexible for families with different timeframes and attention spans. According to the festival, the Kids Walk is generally aimed at children ages 7 to 12, although younger children can also participate with adult guidance. It is presented as part of the festival’s broader walking experience in the official app, which also supports visitors with route information and artwork details. As we don’t have any children of our own, we stuck to the adult-oriented experiences - but we love to see the festival making art more accessible to younger audiences!
The Foodwalk
Those that choose to walk or bike can purchase an upgrade called the Street Food Walk. Local restaurants along the festival route partner with the Amsterdam Lights Festival and provide small bites for you to try during your walkabout. Because the participating restaurants may vary by date and by year, we do recommend pre-purchasing this ahead of time so that you’re able to choose the specific date for your food walk and get an idea of what the menus might look like. The Street Food Walk upcharge was €43.50 ($50.78) per person during our visit, and provided us with food samplings from four different restaurants - on the date of our foodwalk, the restaurants were WE ARE EDN, Soul Kitchen, De Bazel and Black & Blue, all of which offered amazingly fresh and delicious bites of variable size. Participating restaurants are indicated on the official map and (during our visit) were operating for festival walkers from 5:00PM -9:30 PM. Seating at the restaurants may be offered, but is never guaranteed. There are also dinner packages and an Oyster Walk available through the festival website and app, if you would rather that your festival experience include a more substantial meal. We decided on the standard Foodwalk package so that we could try a variety of different foods on the go, and we were not disappointed by the foods we were able to try!
Overall, we had a fantastic evening exploring Amsterdam in a new way and getting to try several new restaurants in one night. We highly recommend the Amsterdam Light Festival to travelers and locals as a fun and insightful date night, friends’ night or even solo adventure. The festival will return between November 2026 and January 2027, and is expected to offer similar packages to those that were offered to us during the 14th Edition. Tickets, packages and event information can be found at https://amsterdamlightfestival.com/en, and a complete list of artworks from the 14th annual event can be found here. In the meantime, you can get a taste (pun intended) of our experience with both the 2025 Festival and the Foodwalk add-on by checking out our experience vlog below!
