Amsterdam Light Festival (and recommended alternatives)

Amsterdam Light Festival, by bike, boat, or on foot

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

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The annual Amsterdam Light Festival® is a winter event that combines light, art and — of course — water.

Dotted around canals in the center of the city are 20 light sculptures created by international artists.

The art installations can be viewed from canal tour boats, on foot, and by bicycle.

Details: Amsterdam Light Festival, Edition 11

Video: Amsterdam Light Festival 2022-2023 Tour – All Artworks 

Amsterdam Light Festival Tickets

The festival can be enjoyed free of charge. You can walk, bike, or sail along the route. But to no one’s surprise, canal cruises (Amsterdam’s top tourist attraction) along the route are heavily promoted:

Amsterdam Light Festival Canal Cruise Tickets

Not into Light Art Installations? Here are your alternatives

The Light Art Installations are not everyone’s cup of tea. But if the Amsterdam Light Festival doesn’t quite float your boat, so to speak, no problem. There are plenty of alternative Amsterdam canal cruises that, in our opinion, are actually more enjoyable.

Personally we prefer to take one of these evening boat rides. You see Amsterdam illuminated by street lanterns, the lights in the windows of canalside houses, and bridges strung with lights.

No wonder Amsterdam have a love song dedicated to the canals.

Tips for Amsterdam Light Festival Visitors

A word to the wise: Most people prefer to see the works of art from the water. Almost all the canal boat companies offer tours.

You can choose glass-topped or open top boats. But you will want to keep the weather in December and January in mind. Dress warmly!

If you are a good photographer, familiar with nighttime photography, an open boat (or, indeed, a walking tour) would probably be your best choice since the windows in a regular tour boat would present a challenge — particularly in inclement weather.

Reviews often mention things like ‘dirty windows,’ ‘rain-splattered windows made it hard to see,’ or ‘the windows kept fogging over.’

So, walking or cycling might even be the better option. [1-day bike rental with hotel delivery and pickup]

Video: Amsterdam Light Festival Aftermovie

Note: The following section covers earlier editions, and includes archived information.

‘One of Europe’s largest light art festivals’

Now in its eight year, the Amsterdam Light Festival Foundation claims to be “one of the largest light art festivals in Europe.”

To wit, the organization has realised 240 artworks, 7 exhibitions and 5 million visitors since 2012.

Official visitor numbers are hard to come by. The Wikipedia entry for the Amsterdam Light Festival lists statistics for the first six editions:

• Editie 2012 – 2013 – 375.000
• Editie 2013 – 2014 – 570.000
• Editie 2014 – 2015 – 730.000
• Editie 2015 – 2016 – 840.000
• Editie 2016 – 2017 – 900.000
• Editie 2017 – 2018 – 900.000

We haven’t found any attendance figures for the 2018 – 2019 edition. But if we subtract the 4.315.000 figure from the Wikipedia listing from the reported 5 million visitors in total we arrive at 685.000 for year seven.

Reportedly, this year the organization expects some 400.000 visitors. ¹

If true, that would be a mere 25.000 more visitors than reported for the first year. [Perhaps negative reviews have something to do with that.]

GLOW Festival Eindhoven

Compare those visitor numbers with the totals for this year’s edition of GLOW Festival Eindhoven. The 2019 edition of this light festival drew 770.000 visitors — in just eight days (November 7 through 14).

In terms of visitor numbers, GLOW ranks among the top five light festivals in the world.

First held in November 2006, the free-for-all GLOW festival will see its 15th anniversary next year.

Brand researcher Hendrik Beerda from Amsterdam conducts annual research into the public awareness of city events in the Netherlands. Last year it listed Glow among the top ten best-rated city events.

The Amsterdam Light Festival does not rank in the top ten. (By the way, in first place is Amsterdam’s quinquennial maritime festival SAIL, which will next take place in August 2020.)

Asked about the Amsterdam Light Festival’s self-reported ‘5 million visitors’, Beerde says that number is a bit sketchy. “The majority of visitors are people who happen to live there or stay as tourists, because the Amsterdam Light Festival is not yet at the level that many people come to the city specifically to see it. But that is true for Glow and that is quite an achievement.”

Video: Glow Eindhoven 2018 Aftermovie

Amsterdam Light Festival: Reviews, and our Opinion

As Amsterdam locals, the Amsterdam Light Festival leaves us underwhelmed.

By now we have seen the complete route during 5 of the 6 editions. The first one was a novelty. We visited the second one — and subsequent editions — in order to review the festival for this website.

When the sixth edition came around (2017-2018) we finally decided that it wasn’t worth our time and money.

We did see some of the art installations on our way to and from other destinations. The same is true for the seventh edition, in the winter of 2018-2019.

Mind you, none of us are really into contemporary art. Perhaps as a result most of the art installations left us puzzled, bemused, or both.

There were some notable exceptions, but they were far and few between.

Now, if you appreciate modern art installations, particularly when they involve light, your mileage may well differ.

But us Amsterdammers much prefer to take one of the regular canal cruises at night.

Amsterdam is a city of lights. In our opinion the illuminated bridges, the monuments lit up by spotlights, and the gezellige interiors of countless different houses along the way provide a much better light show than anything we have seen at the Amsterdam Light Festival.

Fewer Installations. Smaller Installations. Much More Commercialism

In the festival’s early years there were some 40 works of art — generally large installations. Then, as now, there was a boat route (you pay for a ferry boat that sails past each of the installations), and a walking/cycling route (free map).

This year there were only 20 installations. The emphasis is on buying canal boat tickets. The only available map is a digital download for a whopping €7.50.

Amsterdam Light Festival Reviews

Tellingly, the festival reviews we have seen on Google through the years are rather bleak:

“Waste of time,” “boring,” “couldn’t wait to get off the boat,” “BIG disappointment,” “an embarrassment for the city,” “epic waste of time and money,” and “low budget light installations” are among the phrases we would use as well.

This year around we haven’t found a business listing for the Amsterdam Light Festival Foundation on Google Maps — and thus no related reviews.

Tripadvisor: 26% says its ‘terrible’

However, the reviews on TripAdvisor, the largest “social travel website” in the world, tend to give pause for thought as well:

Suggested alternative: Take another canal tour

434 reviewers gave the festival an average of 3 out of 5 points. Fully 26% of the travelers rated the event as ‘terrible.’ The site lists the festival at “#816 out of 952 [Updated December, 2022] things to do in Amsterdam.”

For a much more enjoyable light show, tour the canals of Amsterdam at night — for instance with an Amsterdam Classic Boat Cruise with Cheese and Wine, a 2-hour 3-Course Dinner Cruise, or an Amsterdam Evening Cruise with Pizza and Drinks

These are tours we can heartily recommend — from our own, repeated experience:

Can you guess how many canals and bridges Amsterdam has?

Planning a visit to Amsterdam?

There is a hotel for any budget.

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