The Festival

Ranked as the world’s largest jazz festival by Guinness World Records, the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal has been synonymous with a passion for music for over three decades. Every year, North America’s French-speaking metropolis welcomes global music fans to 10 days of jazzcentric celebration, where fans of all types of jazz-related music rub shoulders with aficionados of the genre in its purest form. The Festival hosts some 30 countries, 3,000 musicians and public entertainers, 1,000 concerts and activities—two-thirds of them free – in 15 concert halls and on 8 outdoor stages, welcoming more than 2 million visitors to the city, from noon to midnight! And it all happens on a unique site designed to meet festivalgoers’ every need, in the heart of Montreal’s downtown core, in an area off-limits to car traffic! There’s no doubt – Montreal is the heartbeat of Planet Jazz!