Circle this date on your calendar, MONTRÉAL EN LUMIÈRE starts this week, thursday February 19th, and up to sunday March 1st.
The festival is one of the largest winter festivals in the world, an annual celebration registering 1 300,000 festival site visits. Here is a quick résumé of this year’s program under three categories : the fine dining, the free outdoor site and Montreal’s Nuit blanche.

This year, the featured country is Switzerland. This country holds the biggest number of Michelin-starred restaurants per habitant in the world. Many great chefs are coming to Montreal, especially Pierre-André Ayer, Grandes Tables de Suisse president and owner of restaurant Le Pérolles in Fribourg. Two other regions are also featured this year, Washington D.C. and the region of Lanaudière. Montreal restaurants offer all-inclusive outings, and some of them are already sold out.

MONTRÉAL EN LUMIÈRE opens with a free outdoor show of Vincent Vallières on thursday February 19th at 8PM, on RBC stage, Place des Festivals. At the same hour and stage, Pierre Kwenders will be on site on wednesday February 25th, Elisapie Isaac on thursday February 26th, Random Recipe on friday February 27th, and many more. The festival has a new site this year : the Salon du livre gourmand, dedicated to cooking and gastronomy, where it will be possible to meet writers. Also, the RBC Tyrolean Zip-Line, a wild new attraction, will allow a soar from west to east, from De Bleury Street almost all the way to St. Urbain Street.

The festival ends with the 12th edition of Montreal’s Nuit blanche on saturday February 28th, the most original event of the festival and a nice visit card for the city. This year, Misteur Valaire and Ariane Moffatt will be on the outdoor stage, respectively at 8PM and 9PM. But Nuit blanche is also visual arts, comedy, games, dance, words. A total of 200 unique activities only presented during this special night, in many locations, including the Montreal underground.

A mobile app is available for Montreal’s Nuit blanche, offered on Android and Iphone. The application gives you the complete schedule and the Radar function to identify the events nearest you.

To see all activities proposed by MONTRÉAL EN LUMIÈRE, and the complete schedule of theater shows, it’s over here.

Have a nice festival!