Quebec Events

Quebec runs a genuinely year-round calendar, which is unusual for a place this cold: the province decided some time ago to hold its festivals outdoors in February anyway.

Montreal in summer

The International Jazz Festival takes over a purpose-built quarter of downtown for ten days from late June and is among the largest music festivals in the world, with a great deal of it free and outdoors. Osheaga follows on Île Sainte-Hélène at the start of August, and the fireworks competition lights the river on summer evenings from a fixed launch site that half the city watches for nothing.

Fête nationale, 24 June

Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day is a statutory holiday and the province’s national day, with bonfires, neighbourhood stages and a very large amount of blue and white. It is the one date that tells a visitor most about how Quebec sees itself, and almost everything is shut.

Festival d’été de Québec, July

Eleven days of concerts on the Plains of Abraham, sold as a single inexpensive pass, drawing headline acts to a city of half a million. It fills every hotel room in Quebec City.

Winter, taken seriously

The Carnaval de Québec runs for two weeks from late January with ice sculpture, canoe racing across the part-frozen river and Bonhomme presiding over all of it — the largest winter carnival anywhere. Montreal answers with Igloofest, which is electronic music outdoors in January, and Montréal en Lumière with its all-night Nuit blanche in late February.

Sugar season and leaves

The sugar shacks open for a few weeks in March and April and book out at weekends. The hardwood colour peaks in the last week of September in the north and mid-October near the border, and the roads through the Laurentians and the Eastern Townships are busy for it.

Book far ahead for the Grand Prix weekend in June, the jazz festival, and the two weeks of the Carnaval; the rest of the year Montreal has room.