Sundance Is Moving to Boulder. The Festival Is Also Getting Bigger.

The most durable institution in American independent film is changing its address. The Sundance Film Festival's 2027 edition runs Thursday, January 21 through Sunday, January 31 in Boulder, Colorado — the first edition in the festival's new home after what the Institute itself calls "more than 40 years" in Park City, Utah. Everything below that describes the festival's shape comes from the Sundance Institute's own published pages; trade colour is labelled as such.

How the Boulder festival will run, day by day

The rhythm Park City veterans know is intact. World premieres run January 21–26. The festival gala is Friday, January 22. Jury and audience awards are announced Friday, January 29. And the online edition — the pandemic-era invention that became permanent — runs January 28–31 for audiences anywhere in the U.S., covering the five competition sections and more, with accredited press and industry getting in a day earlier, from January 27.

The footprint is new, and deliberately tighter than Park City's sprawl: the Institute puts all venues within about a two-mile radius, centred on downtown Boulder and the Pearl Street Mall, with the University of Colorado Boulder's campus theatres in the mix. The announced theatre list runs from the Boulder Theater and Chautauqua Auditorium to CU's Macky Auditorium and the Cinemark Century Boulder — school auditoriums, a public library theatre and a concert hall included. It's a college town being used as a festival site, which is precisely the point the Institute keeps making.

What's changing besides the location

Three things, all Institute-stated. First, size: the four central competition sections — U.S. Dramatic, World Cinema Dramatic, U.S. Documentary, World Cinema Documentary — grow to 12 films each, and the other sections expand with them. Second, the return of New Frontier, the festival's new-media section, after a two-year pause. Third, the machinery: a FIPRESCI jury sits at Sundance for the first time (for debut narrative and documentary in the World Cinema sections), and the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize winners now automatically qualify for the Oscars' International Feature category. The Legacy programme — restorations and returning classics, co-presented by Letterboxd — has already been announced as the first 2027 selections; the main lineup lands in early-to-mid December, per the Institute, with package-holders picking screenings from January 7.

Passes have been on sale since October 15. The Institute's published prices: a Full Festival Ticket Package at $925, an Online Festival Pass at $825, a new Encore package at $675, down to an Ignite package at $275 for 18-to-25-year-olds and enrolled students. Single film tickets follow on January 8.

Why Boulder — in the Institute's own telling

The search ran a year, through information requests, proposals and site visits, with three publicly named finalists: Boulder, Cincinnati, and Salt Lake City. The Institute's criteria, stated at the March 27, 2025 announcement, were infrastructure, ethos and equity values, event capability, and the ability to sustain the festival's community. Board chair Ebs Burnough called Boulder "the ideal location in which to build our Festival's future." Acting CEO Amanda Kelso's version is the quotable one: "Boulder is an art town, tech town, mountain town, and college town." Robert Redford, who founded the Institute in 1981, blessed the move in the same announcement: "As change is inevitable, we must always evolve and grow."

The Associated Press's explainer adds the context the Institute doesn't emphasise: leaders said the festival had outgrown Park City and picked up an air of exclusivity; Utah offered $3.5 million to keep it; Colorado lawmakers proposed $34 million in tax credits over ten years; and the 2024 Utah edition's economic impact was estimated at $132 million — which is the size of the prize Boulder just won, and the standard the first Boulder edition will be measured against. Our awards-season calendar, linked below, places Sundance in the season's full sequence; when the December lineup announcement lands, our coverage starts there.