Festivals near Montreal

In Montreal, summer isn't something you visit — it's something you dance. Every year the Quartier des Spectacles shuts its streets and turns into an open-air stage for the Montreal International Jazz Festival, the largest jazz gathering on earth, where hundreds of free concerts spill across the squares and down Boulevard De Maisonneuve. Weeks later, Osheaga moves the party to Parc Jean-Drapeau on Île Sainte-Hélène, lining up pop, indie and hip-hop against the downtown skyline and the St. Lawrence River — two faces of a bilingual metropolis that lays claim to being North America's festival city.

But Montreal's true identity also plays out far from the headliners: in the venues of the Plateau Mont-Royal and the Main, Pop Montreal scouts the indie and emerging scene each autumn, MUTEK makes the city a laboratory of digital art and electronic music, and Lasso drives its country boots into the heart of the urban summer. FestT calculates your FestiScore — the affinity between a lineup and your favourite artists — and keeps dates, headliners and ticketing up to date. From the giant stages of the Quartier des Spectacles to the smoky clubs of rue Saint-Denis, find the Montreal festival made for your ears.