Featuring unforgettable sets by TRYM, AZYR, Hannah Laing, Zorza and many more, Igloofest ended its month-long season with one last EDM-themed rave before the thaw—a defiant farewell to winter, proving once again that in Montreal, the only force of nature stronger than the cold is the rhythm of resilience.
Text by Jamie Xie
Photos by Louis Alson
It is the machination of the fevered Montreal imagination, a phenomenon born from the city’s unique alchemy which intertwines a burning passion for communal arts with a Canadian spirit forged out in the cold. A love letter to the city that founded it, Igloofest is a full-throttle music festival performed by the frozen banks of the St. Lawrence River, transforming the cobblestone roads of Vieux-Port into the backdrop of countless unforgettable nights with friends. After a month full of weekend festivities, February 6th marked the beginning of the end to Igloofest’s 2026 saga—one final, collective act of winter defiance, a true testimony to the perseverance and patience tempered by the city’s unforgiving conditions.
Since its inception in 20071, Igloofest has been at the forefront of music festival culture, reinventing—in its uniquely Quebecois way—the classic outdoor music festival. Having been co-produced by Piknic Electronik and the Quays of the Old Port, Igloofest has come far from its initial conception as an experimental offshoot to the pre-existing summer music festival Piknic Electronik, taking on its own identity, a pioneering force in the urban winter-rave concept. With a focus on highlighting local artists, Igloofest channels its deep-seated desires to give back to the city that founded it, delivering a month’s worth of sleepless weekends set to music that is as authentic as it sounds.
In an interview with XLR8R2, Nicholas Cournoyer, co-founder of the event remarked on the role of local Montreal DJs, speaking specifically to the role of offering local Montreal DJs an opportunity to perform saying, “At first that was necessary—in the early years we couldn’t afford to have any international DJs. But we still like to focus on the local scene […] They are the ones who keep the city’s scene alive; they make us dance, and they make us dream.”
When we reinvent ways to celebrate in times of strife, we reinvent ways of looking at the world. Igloofest has since gone on to host many international celebrities in its “Igloovillage”. Expanding further to Gatineau, Quebec, Edmonton and featuring events such as the infamous “Snowsuit Contest”. But it has not lost touch with its roots as a perpetuation of the ongoing conversation in the Montreal music scene. The festival featured a two stage set up—the primary Sapporo stage featuring heavier electronic dance music remixes and a secondary Videotron stage reserved for a more underground experimental club sound.
The festival’s main stage thundered with Toronto’s Zorza3, whose cinematic, melodic techno sets set the tone for the rest of the night. Moving through the night into international headliners, a distinctive European intensity took on the stage. Hannah Laing4, delivered UK house music which, when combined with AZYR’s5 hard groove remixes, created an industrial-strength set that led perfectly into TRYM6. Concluding the night was TRYM’s set, a relentless, high rhythm hard techno remix that select people in the crowd moshed to. Certainly not for the faint of heart, the music leaned into those metallic percussion sounds, offering heavy distortion and aggressive texturing that any true EDM fan would love.
At its secondary stage is the “Homegrown Harvest” set, a dedication to local Montreal DJs with a slight Y2K aesthetic. To enter the Videotron Stage pit, there’s a bypass through the 3D volumetric light tunnel installation “Radiant7” by Rob Jensen. With changing lights that are tailored to match the music dynamics, the piece works in coordination with the local musical set at the Videotron stage to unite different Montreal perspectives into one cohesive product. It finds the intersection between music and visual art, inviting the viewer to consider how “community inspires from every angle.”
While the main stage delved into popular EDM, the secondary stage offered a deconstructive look at the electronic music scene’s underground. Switching from the more dramatic larger stage to a more intimate hidden away one, the set itself was often an interplay between the DJs. Opening the night, they began with a triple remix, where all three artists were involved on and off at the mixing table. Traxence8 whose progressive sound weaves layers of techno and atmospheric trance. The energy is sustained and builds forward-moving momentum with familiar sounds that coordinate to the nostalgic light projections of Nyan cat and the DVD screensaver from old CRTs. Following this, donotstealmyname9 offered raw, driving techno bring an intensity and rhythmic current that naturally bled into Badgalquirit’s10 deconstructed rhythm. Unpredictable and textural, she focuses on industrial ambiance and experimental sound that feels avant-garde but also immediately present. Together the artists defined the second stage as a truly Montreal haven, a dissection of the heart which allows Igloofest to happen at all.
Whether it’s through the artists that it raised or the music community that braved the snow, Igloofest is the unified efforts of thousands of people who love music and art more than they fear the cold. It is a truly miraculous fixture of the Montreal cultural memory, representing just one of many events in a long line up of upcoming intercity winter activities about to make its way into the heart of Montrealers everywhere. With Nuit Blanche and LUMINO steadfast approaching, Igloofest’s closing weekend is in many ways the brilliant beginning of something much cooler than ice itself.
