The lights keep no timetable. Your driver does.
Which chase drives far enough to get out from under the cloud. What a guaranteed sighting actually promises when the sky stays shut. Whether the minibus or the big coach is the better seat. Reviews of every northern-lights tour you can book.
★ 5.0Tromso Northern Lights Minibus Chase Small Group Tour with Photos
Northern Lights Bus Tour from Reykjavik with Hot Chocolate
Northern Lights Photography Tour
Four aurora nights worth building a whole trip around.
A coach out of Reykjavik, a minibus chase above Tromso, a guaranteed sighting in Rovaniemi, and the small-group night people save up for. What each costs, and what the people who stood out there in the dark say about it.
01The Iceland coachNorthern Lights Bus Tour with Hot CocoaCheap, big, and it moves. The driver takes the whole fleet toward whichever gap in the cloud opens up that night.
02The Tromso safariNorthern Lights Safari with Expert Guides and PhotosThermal suits, a fire on the shore, and guides who will drive to the Finnish border if the Lyngen sky closes over.
03The guaranteed nightNorthern Lights Tour with Guaranteed SightingsRovaniemi operators who take you out again free if nothing shows. Worth the money on a two-night stop.
04The one to save forSmall-Group Northern Lights Tour by MinibusEight people, a minibus, and a guide with a tripod for your camera. Nobody stands behind forty other coats.
Big bus, minibus or boat: choosing a chase out of Tromso.
The same sky, three completely different nights. What each kind of chase costs a head, how many people are standing next to you, and how far it will really drive to find a hole in the cloud.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · Northern Lights Safari with Expert Guides and Photos
The big-bus chaseCheapest seat out of town, and it still goes where the cloud is not.
The camera nightA guide who sets your own camera and hands back real frames.
Dinner, then the darkA reindeer camp or a boat galley first, then out to wait.
Every Norway nightTromso, Alta, Bodo and the Lofoten islands.
All 121 aurora nights in Norway →
Six countries under the auroral oval, and the best night in each.
Finnish Lapland for deep snow and glass roofs. Arctic Norway for the fjord chases. Iceland for the cheap coaches an hour from the airport. Swedish Abisko for a corridor of clear sky. Alaska and the Yukon for a long inland winter. Start with the sky you can actually reach.
The most-booked aurora nights anywhere in the north.
Every northern-lights tour we have reviewed →More travellers take these than any other night under the lights, and each one has a reason it holds the slot.
1
Northern Lights Bus Tour with Hot Cocoa
Review of Reykjavik’s Northern Lights bus tour, with aurora tips, hot cocoa, guide quality, free retry policy, and practical advice.
From · $74
Read our review →
2
Northern Lights Safari with Expert Guides and Photos
from $61
3
Northern Lights Pioneer Tour with Photos Included
from $165
4
Northern Lights Tour with Guaranteed Sightings
from $164
5
Northern Lights Chase with Photos and Bodysuits
from $125
6
Small-Group Premium Northern Lights Tour from Reykjavik
from $107
7
#1 Northern Lights Tour In Iceland from Reykjavik with PRO photos
8
Reindeer Sled, Dinner, and Chance of Northern Lights
from $219
The aurora photography nights that hand you actual pictures.
Nearly every operator in the north now advertises photos. The difference is whether a guide sets your own camera on a tripod in the dark, or emails everyone the same three frames next morning. These are the nights that do the first thing.
Three things decide whether you actually see the northern lights.
Season first: the sky is dark enough from late September to late March, and nobody runs a chase in June. Then cloud, which is the whole argument for a tour that will drive 200km rather than a viewpoint that cannot move. Then the cold, because the people who last four hours outside are the ones who were handed a thermal suit and had a fire to stand next to.
Tromso has more ways out from under the cloud than anywhere.
Sixty-nine degrees north with direct flights in, and a ring of fjords, inland valleys and border roads a chase van can reach inside two hours. When the coast fogs in, the good operators keep driving east toward Finland until the sky opens.
What one night out under the aurora costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what it costs a head. A seat on a coach out of Reykjavik runs a third of a small-group chase in Norway, and on a clear night both see the same sky.
Coach seats out of Reykjavik, aurora centres, sleigh rides and the short runs out of Tromso.
The standard chase: a minibus, thermal suits, a fire, photos, four to five hours out.
Small groups, private drivers, snowmobile and reindeer nights, and the glass-roof stays.
Rovaniemi turned the northern lights into an industry that works.
Everything in Finland →
Snow on the ground from November, a town that runs on winter, and more guaranteed-sighting operators than the rest of the north combined. Add a glass roof, a herd of reindeer and a road network that lets a van run 150km inland before midnight.
What a guaranteed sighting really buys
Nobody can promise the sun. What these operators promise is another night out at no charge if the sky stayed shut, which only helps if you are in town for more than one night. Read the re-run terms before the price.
A guide who sets your own camera
A phone will not hold the exposure. On these nights someone sets your aperture and focus on a tripod in the dark, then edits a handful of frames on the drive home. Ask whether the pictures are yours or the operator’s.
Eat first, then wait it out
Standing still at minus twenty is the part people underestimate. A camp with a fire, soup and a lavvu to duck into is the difference between four hours out and one hour and a taxi back.
Glass roofs, aurora camps, and a bed you never have to leave.
Some nights you do not want to be in a van at two in the morning. A heated dome on a frozen lake, a lavvu with a fire going, a glass igloo where the wake-up call is a guide knocking because the sky just went green.
Every aurora camp and igloo →
Four aurora nights that will not wait for your flight to land.
Most of the north can be arranged from a hotel lobby the same afternoon. These four cannot: a fixed number of seats, one departure a night, and a season that is only six months long to begin with.
- 01PRIVATE Party dinner in a Glass Igloo Under Northern LightsA resort has a handful of glass roofs and they go months ahead across the Christmas and February peaks.
- 02Northern Lights Tour with Guaranteed SightingsA guaranteed-sighting night caps its group so it can run you again free. The caps fill before the cheap seats do.
- 03Reindeer Sled, Dinner, and Chance of Northern LightsHerders run one sitting a night through the dark months and stop when the season ends in early April.
- 04Northern Lights & Chena Hot Springs TourThe Fairbanks hot-springs run works to a fixed shuttle time with one bus, and the bus is the whole allocation.
Iceland puts an aurora night an hour from the airport.
Reykjavik runs the biggest fleet of chase coaches in the north, plus boats out of the old harbour and minibuses that leave the ring road for the Reykjanes lava. It is the cheapest way into a night under the lights, and the one place a two-night stopover is worth gambling on.
- 1Northern Lights Bus Tour with Hot Cocoafrom $74
- 2Small-Group Premium Northern Lights Tour from Reykjavikfrom $107
- 3#1 Northern Lights Tour In Iceland from Reykjavik with PRO photos
Three aurora nights that exist nowhere else on earth.
Standing in a field waiting for green is universal. A snowmobile convoy out onto a frozen lake, a sled behind a reindeer that has done this since it was two, and floating on your back in a drysuit while it moves overhead are not.
The Snowmobile Night
The lake ice off Rovaniemi and Kiruna carries a machine from January, and once you are twenty minutes out the town glow is gone completely. Guides ride single file with the headlights off at the stops, which is when people finally see how much of the sky the arc covers. Full thermal kit comes with it; a car licence is usually enough to drive your own.
- 1Aurora Borealis Snowmobile Safari with Campfire★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 1,108 reviews
- 2Snowmobile Northern Lights Hunting Trip★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 610 reviews
- 3Northern Lights Hunt Snowmobile Safari★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 195 reviews
The Reindeer Sled
Sami herders in Finnmark and Lapland have moved these animals between winter and summer pasture for a thousand years, and the sled ride is the same rig scaled down. It is slow, which is the point: no engine noise, no headlights, and a herder who reads the sky better than any app. Most nights end in a lavvu with coffee boiled on the fire.
- 1Reindeer Sled, Dinner, and Chance of Northern Lights★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 2,651 reviews
- 2Reindeer Feeding & Chance of Northern Lights Viewing★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,440 reviews
- 3Reindeer Camp Dinner with Chance of Northern Lights★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 806 reviews
Aurora Ice Floating
A hole is cut in the lake ice, you are zipped into a buoyant drysuit, and you lie back in water at just above freezing while the arc moves. Nothing touches you and nothing is cold; the suit does all of it. Groups are tiny because someone has to be on the ice watching, and the season runs only while the ice holds.
- 1Ice Floating in Forest Lake with Aurora Borealis★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 797 reviews
- 2Aurora Arctic Ice Floating in Rovaniemi, Small-group★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 109 reviews
- 3Ice Floating in Forest Lake with Aurora Borealis★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 77 reviews
By town — where the chases leave from
Tromso, Rovaniemi, Reykjavik: how a first aurora week fits together.
Alta
AbiskoThe newest northern-lights reviews.
Keep reading the newest chases →
Lofoten: Northern Lights Tour with Photographer
Read our review →
Chase the Magic of the Northern Lights in Tromsø Norway
Read our review →
Berlin: Classical concerts in Köpenick Palace – Aurora Hall
Read our review →
Aurora Small Group 4×4 Northern Lights Adventure
Read our review →
