The Northern Lights – one of nature’s greatest shows on Earth – tops the bucket lists of travelers all over the globe. Join us on a thrilling hunt from Reykjavik to spot this ghostly glow in the night sky. We escape the city’s artificial lights and drive into the deep darkness of the countryside. Your guide will keep a close eye on weather conditions to find the perfect spot to admire the Aurora Borealis. Your encounter with these ephemeral lights will make for a magical night!
Your guide will take free photos of you and the aurora for your travel album, so you’ll always have a reminder of this dazzling moment!
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The minibus Northern Lights tour is one of our most popular tours. We follow the best aurora and cloud forecast available to optimize your chance of seeing the aurora borealis dancing across the night sky. Due to its proximity to the Arctic Circle and the magnetic pole, Iceland’s auroral activity is some of the most intense in the northern hemisphere.
Your Northern Lights tour starts with the thrill of the pursuit. Once your guide picks you up from Reykjavik, be prepared for the hunt. You’ll drive out into the unparalleled beauty of a starry night. As the forecast changes daily, unfortunately, we can’t tell you exactly where our quest for the aurora borealis will take us. But one thing is guaranteed–we will take you far away from the city lights! We could go to Hvalfjörður, Þingvellir, Reykjanes, or to some other rural area in South Iceland to escape light pollution. Traveling by minibus means we can get to offbeat locations that the big buses can’t reach.
If the Northern Lights show up – and it might be at any time – it can be awe-inspiring. They may appear quite subtly, then before you know it, stretch and expand into swirling and dancing patterns across the sky. Whether dramatic or delicate, they’re always a surreal and special sight to behold. Green and yellow auroras are the most common. Blue, violet, and rose auroras are less regular but equally as stunning. Red hues are the rarest, yet they’re more common in Iceland than anywhere else in the world.
During our minibus tour, your guide will snap a photograph of you and the aurora free of charge that you can access online after the tour. See photos from previous tours. We guarantee you that this is a moment you’ll certainly want to have on film!
For the Northern Lights adventure, pick-up is at either 20:30 (8:30 p.m.) or 21:30 (9:30 p.m.), depending on the season. You’ll find the actual pickup time in the booking process and on your final voucher. Picking everyone up can take up to 30 minutes, your patience is much appreciated.
Available pick-up points: Arctic Adventures’s pick-up list.
As the success of the northern lights tour is heavily dependent on weather conditions, we reserve the right to cancel the northern lights part of the tour until 18:15 on the day of the tour if the aurora forecast is not looking good. When this happens your payment is fully refunded.
If no aurora is seen, you’ll have unlimited re-tries valid for up to 3 years. That’s right, you’ll be able to re-join the chase of Northern Lights until it’s a successful one!
What to do in this case? Our Customer Care is ready to help you and book your next re-try.
Please keep in mind that refunds are not issued when a tour takes place but no Northern Lights are seen.
The Northern Lights are natural phenomena and we unfortunately cannot promise you will see them on our tours. Their appearance depends upon atmospheric and weather conditions, which are factors entirely out of our control.
For more information on the Northern Lights, please have a look at our Northern Lights information.
Unfortunately, there isn’t just one simple answer to this question.
Your camera doesn't have a single setting that will guarantee excellent pictures. But if you have manual controls, playing with different mixtures of ISO, aperture, and exposure settings is usually preferable. As a general rule, ISO settings of 800 to 3200, f/2.8 to f/5.6, and shutter speeds of 15 to 30 seconds have been found to be successful.
Keep in mind that ISO settings between 800 and 3200, f/2.8 and f/5.6, and shutter speeds between 15 and 30 seconds have produced excellent results.
Results from various combinations can vary greatly. You can take faster exposures with a higher ISO setting, but the photographs can turn up grainier as a result.
If the shutter speed is above 15 seconds it will result in a slight star movement.
In low-light situations, wider-angle lenses are typically more adaptable, while longer lenses provide you with more compositional alternatives. Make sure to take off any lens filters because they could cause image distortion. Most likely, using a manual setting for infinite focal length will get the greatest results.
Since the spectacle of the Northern Lights is very much weather-dependent, if no aurora is seen, you’ll have unlimited re-tries valid for up to 3 years. That’s right, you’ll be able to re-join the chase of Northern Lights until it’s a successful one!
What to do in this case? Our Customer Care is ready to help you and book your next re-try.
Please keep in mind that refunds are not issued when a tour takes place but no Northern Lights are seen. During a re-try, the tour is operated on a minibus.
When Northern Lights tours are cancelled it’s usually due to unfavourable weather conditions.
In that case, your options will be to:
1. Reschedule for another day.
2. Find another tour to embark on and use the deposit for it.
3. Get fully refunded.
Please contact our Customer Care team to re-book your tour.
The Northern Lights are a pretty difficult thing to predict. You can check the Icelandic Meteorological Office website to see the forecast - if the level is high and the skies are clear then it’s very likely that the tour is going ahead. We do update our website’s tour departure sheet with the information at 17:00 at the latest. If the tour is canceled, you will receive an email from us notifying you.
If we think there is no chance at all of seeing the lights, we will cancel the tour. We don’t want to bring you out and disappoint you if there will definitely be no aurora activity.
Yes, the guide will take a photo of you with the Northern Lights behind you. These can be single or group photos and are free of charge.
The Northern Lights season is said to be from late August until mid-April. However, if you want to increase your chances of seeing them, it is best to wait until the colder winter months, from mid-September until March.
If luck and weather are on your side, then you will be able to see the aurora borealis above the inviting streets of Reykjavik. Whether you see the lights or not depends on two unique factors. The first is the weather: If the sky is clear, with no clouds, then you are halfway to seeing the astonishing spectacle that is the Northern Lights (although light pollution can sometimes be a problem). Increased solar activity is the second factor, so if these two are both favorable at the same time you may well be able to see the Northern Lights from Reykjavik.
If you're visiting during winter, typically from mid-October to mid-April, we highly recommend using lightweight crampons (also called ice spikes) for added safety on icy paths while sightseeing. You can purchase them during the booking process to ensure a more secure and comfortable experience.
Find more details about crampons and ice spikes in this guide.
