Alta Northern Lights Tours

A northern lights tour from Alta is an evening drive out of the town’s lights to wherever the sky is clearest that night, a few hours outside in the cold, and a ride back. Nobody can promise the aurora, so the real differences are the size of the group, what keeps you warm while you wait, and how far the vehicle goes. The one to start with is Amazing Aurora’s Alta: Northern Lights Adventure Tour with Fire & Free Photos, from US$128 a person (checked November 2026): up to six hours with two guides, a campfire with hot drinks and marshmallows, and professional photos of you under the lights.

The short answer

Book the campfire tour for one of your first evenings in Alta. Amazing Aurora by KARLSØY BUSS AS picks up at Løkkeveien 55, beside the Northern Lights Cathedral, or at Havneveien 32 near the harbour. There is no fixed route: the guides track the live weather and sky conditions and drive to the night’s best spot, then stop, light a fire and explain what is happening above you. It has a toilet on board and 41 reviews (checked November 2026). On nights with few bookings it runs in a smaller vehicle.

Check dates for the campfire tour

None of the Alta aurora tours on this page offers a free second night if the sky stays empty, so the strategy is simple: go early in your stay, and keep a later night free to book again.

Pick your kind of night

Prices, ratings and review counts from the listings (GetYourGuide checked November 2026). Operators price by date and season, so treat the figures as the shape of the market, not a quote.

Where the tours go

The coach and bus tours have no fixed stop. Amazing Aurora’s guides chase the clearest sky with real-time tracking; Finnmark Adventure's bus sometimes stays close to Alta and sometimes drive further into the countryside; Alta Adventure’s guides sometimes drive quite far and sometimes find the lights close to town. The one tour with a named destination is Æventyr's snowmobile night, which follows the old postal road up to the edge of Finnmarksvidda, at a mountain range called Beskades.

Arriving by air, Alta Airport is 4.5 km by road from the Løkkeveien 55 pickup and 1.6 km from Havneveien 32 (the cathedral guide has the town map).

Fjord, plateau and the clouds

Alta sits at the head of the Altafjord, with the tundra of the Finnmarksvidda plateau behind it. NordNorsk Reiseliv, the tourist board for Northern Norway, sells the town on “Alta’s dry inland climate” and says Alta is “blessed with a dry climate, because it lies deep within the beautiful Altafjord”. It gives no cloud statistics, and nobody publishes a reliable chance of clear sky for a given night, so this site does not invent one. What the board’s claim does mean in practice is that the guides have room to move: inland, up the valleys, or along the fjord, wherever the cloud forecast opens.

The forecast

Yr, the weather service run by NRK and the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, publishes an aurora forecast for Alta up to three days ahead: an activity level, the cloud cover, and images from aurora cameras nearby. Its short-term nowcast gives a percentage 30 to 90 minutes ahead, based on the solar wind. The forecast guide explains how to read it, what the Kp number means this far north, and where the cameras are.

When the sky stays empty

Every aurora listing here says the lights cannot be guaranteed. What differs is what happens around the weather. Alta Adventure’s small group runs in any weather and is cancelled only for dangerous weather or driving conditions, with a full refund. Amazing Aurora adjusts the route and length of the night to the weather and the sky, up to six hours. All four aurora listings could be cancelled for a full refund up to 24 hours before the start when read in checked November 2026; none offered a free second night. So the night you book matters more than the tour you pick.

Coach, small group, bus or snowmobile

The campfire coach is the cheapest seat and the only one with free photos. The small group costs about twice as much and lends warm suits and boots, which is worth something if you arrived without Arctic clothing (what to wear). The bus is the shortest night. The snowmobile is an activity in its own right: two hours driving on the plateau’s edge in a convoy, and the aurora if the sky allows.

When to go

Visit Norway gives the season as September to April, when the sky is clear and dark, and names March and April, and September and October, as the most active months. In Alta the sun does not rise at all from 26 November 2026 to 16 January 2027, on the Norwegian Meteorological Institute’s sun data, so the whole day is dark enough for the aurora when the sky allows. The best time goes through the months, the polar night and the weather.

The Northern Lights Cathedral, the reindeer and the fjord

Alta’s best-known building is the Northern Lights Cathedral, at Markedsgata 30, consecrated on 10 February 2013; it is 0.2 km on foot from the campfire tour’s Løkkeveien 55 pickup (the cathedral). By day, SAMI SIIDA’s *Alta: Reindeer - A carrier of Sámi Culture* is an hour with the reindeer, from US$68 in current promotion (usually US$85) (checked November 2026; the reindeer guide). Between November and January herring come into the Altafjord, and orcas and humpback whales follow them: finnmark moods’ *Alta: Altafjord Whale Watching in a Heated Boat*, from US$239 in current promotion (usually US$266) (checked November 2026), leaves from Havneveien 24, a 0.3 km walk from the Havneveien 32 pickup.

The Sorrisniva igloo hotel, by the Alta river and 17.9 km by road from the town pickup, is rebuilt of ice and snow every winter and opens on 20 December; it is a place to stay or visit, not a tour sold here. For a second view of Alta’s aurora season, northernlightsdestinations.com compares Alta with other aurora destinations and covers the small-group tour in depth.