The Sundance Film Festival has mapped out its new home. Festival director Eugene Hernandez sent a mid-year update this week detailing the venues, dates, and expanded programming for the 2027 edition in Boulder, Colorado — the first since Sundance left Park City, Utah after decades. (Variety)

The 2027 festival runs January 21–31. World premieres — the screenings where a film is shown to an audience for the first time anywhere — are concentrated in the first stretch, Thursday January 21 through Tuesday January 26. The annual gala falls on Friday January 22. (Variety)

Boulder beat out two other finalist cities for the hosting rights, a selection process the Sundance Institute narrowed in September 2024. Colorado Governor Jared Polis publicly welcomed the festival to its new home in March 2025. The Sundance Institute formally confirmed the January 2027 dates in a blog post on February 24, 2026. (Sundance Institute, September 2024; Sundance Institute, March 2025; Sundance Institute, February 2026)

The venue footprint is compact. All screening sites sit within roughly a two-mile radius: the University of Colorado Boulder's Macky Auditorium, the historic Chautauqua Auditorium, the Boulder Theater, and the Cinemark Century multiplex. For anyone who navigated Sundance's old shuttle buses up and down Park City's mountain corridors, that density is a practical shift — fewer transit hops between screenings. (Variety)

The competition sections are growing. Each of the four central categories — U.S. Dramatic, World Cinema Dramatic, U.S. Documentary, and World Cinema Documentary — will expand from 10 films to 12 starting in 2027. Other sections, including Premieres, NEXT (Sundance's showcase for innovative, boundary-pushing work), Midnight, and Family Matinee, will also add films. (Variety)

Online access remains part of the plan. Public at-home screenings run Thursday January 28 through Sunday January 31, covering the five competition sections including NEXT. Press and industry get a one-day head start, with online access opening Wednesday January 27. (Variety)

Sundance has also been running on-the-ground orientations in Boulder for major stakeholders — agents, artists, and public-relations teams — to walk them through the new layout before the festival begins. (Variety)

The festival's Offscreen programming, formerly called Beyond Film, is expanding too. Live podcast recordings will join the existing slate of talks and events such as Cinema Café, The Big Conversation, and Power of Story. (Variety)

For anyone planning to attend, the practical details arrive in September, when Sundance says it will share information on passes, ticket packages, and single-film tickets. (Variety)