Sundance Rentals in Boulder: Where to Stay in 2027, What It Costs and When to Book

In April 2026, a Boulder home appeared online asking $100,000 for ten festival nights. By June, dozens of homes were listed above $5,000 a night. By October, the city had cleared 1,525 homes to advertise, Visit Boulder had published a price table for hosts, and the first passes had gone on sale.

If you are searching for a Sundance rental in Boulder right now, you have arrived in the middle of a market that is still finding its level. Nobody, including the city, knows exactly where prices will settle. What can be known is how the market is built: how many beds exist, who is allowed to rent them, what the people who wrote the rules consider a fair price, and which dates will decide everything. This guide puts those facts in one place, with a date and a source for each.

The numbers behind the crunch

Park City had four decades to grow into the festival. Boulder is doing it in a single year, and the arithmetic is unforgiving. The city has about 108,000 residents, about 47,000 housing units and fewer than 3,000 hotel rooms. The festival drew 85,472 in-person attendees to Park City and Salt Lake City in 2025, roughly a third of them from out of state. Boulder's own planning assumes about 30,000 out-of-town visitors during the peak period.

Two more facts shape the hotel picture. Visit Boulder says Boulder's hotels have committed about 70 percent of their rooms to the festival at what it calls affordable rates, though neither the rates nor the room counts have been published. And it advises calling hotels directly: several are holding blocks for groups, so a hotel that shows nothing online may still have rooms.

Your four options

A Boulder hotel. The city's hotels range from the 1909 Hotel Boulderado and the St Julien downtown to the Limelight Hotel on University Hill, which opened in August 2025 with about 250 rooms, and the chain properties along 28th Street near the Cinemark. Mid-range prices reported in mid-2026 ran from $229 a night at the Boulder Broker to $299 to $409 at Basecamp Boulder downtown, with the luxury properties above that. A hotel suits couples, short stays and anyone who does not want a car. The catch is opening weekend, January 21 to 24, when inventory is thinnest.

A private home or condo in Boulder. This is where most of the supply is, and where groups belong. Visit Boulder lists eight vetted property managers, among them Fox Property Management, SkyRun, Marquee Stays and Home Host Concierge, and points to Airbnb and Vrbo as well. The city's festival license added second homes, long-term rentals and tenant sublets to the supply, which is why the count jumped from a few hundred licenses in June to more than 1,800 by October. A home suits groups of four to six, eleven-night stays, and anyone working through the festival who needs a kitchen, a desk and a door that closes. The catches are licensing, parking and price discipline, all covered below.

The official lodging site. Sundance runs lodging.sundance.org, which lists hotels, condos and homes in Boulder and across the Front Range, and bookings support the Sundance Institute. It listed about 160 Boulder properties when we checked on November 8, 2026, with more added as licenses clear. It is the one place where a listing has at least passed through the festival's own process, which is worth something in a first-year market.

A nearby town, or Denver. Louisville, Superior and Lafayette each created their own festival rental licenses in 2026. Airbnb told the Boulder Reporting Lab in June that searches for Denver stays on festival dates were up 10 percent, and searches in Louisville, Nederland, Longmont, Lafayette and Erie had more than doubled. Drive times run from about 15 minutes from Superior to about 40 from downtown Denver without traffic, and the Flatiron Flyer bus connects Denver, Westminster, Broomfield, Louisville and Superior to downtown Boulder. A nearby town suits a budget and anyone who already has a car. The catch is the last ride home after a midnight screening. Our neighborhoods guide compares the towns one by one.

What Sundance rentals in Boulder actually cost

There are two sets of numbers in this market: what the local tourism bureau says a home should cost, and what listings have asked. They are far apart, and the gap between them is where your negotiating room lives.

The benchmark: Visit Boulder's pricing guidelines

Visit Boulder, the city's tourism bureau, published a pricing table for hosts in 2026. It is built, the bureau told Denver7, on two years of Park City booking data and January benchmarks from Airbnb and Vrbo. It prices stays of four, seven and eleven nights, with the nightly rate falling 5 percent for a week and 10 percent for the full festival. Homes within a mile's walk of the festival core add 10 percent.

Before tax and cleaning fees. Add 10 percent for homes within a mile of the venues. Source: Visit Boulder, Festival Home Rental Pricing Guidelines, 2026.

You may see "$250 to $1,386 a night" quoted elsewhere as Sundance's official guidance. Those are the two corners of this table: the cheapest condo for four nights, and a four-bedroom house within walking distance for eleven. The table is Visit Boulder's, not the festival's.

What listings have actually asked

• April 29, 2026. 9News found listings asking as much as $100,000 for a ten-night stay and multiple Airbnb homes above $5,000 a night. Caleb Dickinson, co-owner of Fox Property Management, which manages more than 100 local rentals, called the $100,000 narrative false and said two to three times a home's typical nightly rate is realistic.
• June 16, 2026. The Boulder Reporting Lab counted dozens of Boulder homes above $5,000 a night and found Airbnb rates more than doubling for festival dates compared with the week before. Property managers told the paper they expected prices to fall as more homes listed and overpriced ones sat empty.
• June 25, 2026. CBS Colorado found homes advertised for up to $60,000 for ten nights, more than four times Visit Boulder's guidance, with the priciest listings clustered downtown and near Pearl Street. The lowest short-term rentals were about $400 a night. Basecamp Boulder, a downtown hotel, quoted $299 for a standard king and $409 for a family suite.
• September 17, 2026. 5280 pulled Airbnb snapshots: a downtown two-bedroom at $2,235 a night for Sundance against $691 for CU's homecoming weekend; a one-bedroom near campus at $359; a South Boulder three-bedroom at $795; a Gunbarrel three-bedroom at $922 to $1,825. For comparison, Airbnb says Park City hosts earned $125 to $425 a night during the 2026 festival.
• Mid-2026, official site. Your Boulder spotted a five-bedroom Boulder house at $3,636 a night and the Boulder Broker hotel at $229 on lodging.sundance.org.

What a fair deal looks like

• Start from the home's normal January rate and multiply by two or three. That is the rule of thumb from the manager of more than 100 local rentals, and for most homes it lands inside Visit Boulder's table.
• Treat the table as the ceiling for an ordinary home. A house with mountain views, a driveway and two kitchens can sit at the top of its band. A house asking four times the band is not pricing to rent. Managers call those "make me move" listings. Let them sit.
• Expect prices to drift down, not up, as January nears. That was the consensus of the property managers quoted in June, and the license count has tripled since. The exception is opening weekend near downtown, where demand is densest.
• Add 12.835 percent for tax. Boulder's accommodations tax is 7.5 percent, and state, county and RTD taxes bring the total on lodging to 12.835 percent. A three-bedroom house at $900 a night for eleven nights is $9,900 before tax and $11,171 after, plus any cleaning fee.
• Compare totals, not nightly rates. Cleaning fees, platform fees and deposits vary more than nightly rates do. Ask for one all-in number for your dates.

Boulder's festival rental rules, and how to check a listing

Boulder normally allows short-term rentals only in an owner's primary residence. That rule would have kept most of the city's 47,000 homes off the market, so the City Council changed it twice.

• October 9, 2025: the Festival Lodging Rental License. Council created a new license, Ordinance 8715, after a 7 to 1 first vote in September. It lets any property, owner-occupied or not, be rented for up to 29 days a year during a city-designated festival. Second homes and long-term rentals qualify.
• April 2, 2026: tenants too. A second ordinance, 8743, passed unanimously. It lets tenants sublet with the owner's written consent and lets owners hold both a long-term and a festival license. The city began issuing licenses in early May 2026.

What the license means for you as a guest:

• It can only be used from January 11 to February 9, 2027. Ten days before the festival and nine after. A festival-licensed home cannot legally host you outside that window.
• Occupancy is capped by code. Sleeping rooms must meet the city's habitability standards, and the license holder signs a safety affidavit. A three-bedroom listing that says it sleeps ten deserves a question.
• It covers the city only. Unincorporated Boulder County, including much of Gunbarrel and the mountain roads west of town, falls under county rules. Louisville, Superior and Lafayette run their own festival licenses.
• Homeowners' association rules still apply. A license does not override an HOA ban on short-term rentals.
• An ordinary short-term rental license is also valid. Hosts who already held one did not need a festival license and were added to the festival program automatically.
• Tax applies to every night. The 7.5 percent short-term rental tax is collected on all festival stays. Airbnb collects it for its hosts; a private host should show it on the invoice.

Five checks before you pay a deposit:

1. Ask for the license number and type. Either a Festival Lodging Rental License or a standard Short-Term Rental License. A host who cannot produce one is not allowed to advertise, let alone rent.
2. Look the address up. The city publishes a Licensed Residential Rental Properties list and map on its rental licensing pages.
3. If the host is a tenant, ask to see the owner's consent. The city requires it in writing.
4. Confirm your dates fit the window. Check in on or after January 11 and check out by February 9, 2027, unless the home holds a standard license.
5. Confirm the address is inside city limits, or licensed in its own town. Licenses take two to six weeks to process, and "pending" means the host may not legally advertise yet.

When to book

Lodging demand follows the ticket calendar, so the calendar is the thing to watch.

• Coming for opening weekend? Book now. Hotels are thinnest January 21 to 24, and the best homes near downtown will go before the lineup drops.
• Flexible? Aim for January 25 to 31. Visit Boulder says hotel inventory opens significantly in the second week, home prices should be softer, and the Matinee ticket package covers weekday screenings before 5 p.m. from January 25 to 29.
• Pay for the refund. In a first-year market, a refundable hotel rate or a home with a generous cancellation window is worth more than a 10 percent discount. You will know more in December than you do today.
• Book the bed before the tickets. Single tickets go on sale January 8. If you wait for them before choosing a place to stay, you will be choosing from what is left.

What to ask a host before you pay

• The license. Number, type, and whether the host is the owner or a tenant with written consent.
• Beds, not "sleeps." How many real beds, in how many rooms with doors. The city caps occupancy, and couches do not count.
• Parking and snow. How many cars fit off the street, whether the street is a permit zone, and who shovels the driveway by morning.
• The all-in price. Nightly rate, cleaning fee, any platform fee, the 12.835 percent tax, the deposit, and the cancellation terms in writing.
• Check-in. Self check-in or a meeting, the earliest arrival time, and what happens when your flight lands at 11 p.m.
• Internet. A speed test result, not an adjective. Anyone working the festival from the house will need it.
• What is yours and what is not. Some homes keep a studio, a garage or a room locked. Ask for the list of included spaces.
• Heat and fireplaces. How the house is heated, and whether the fireplaces are gas or wood and in use.
• Quiet hours and the neighbors. Not every Boulder resident wanted the festival on their street. A good host will tell you the house rules and the neighbor's name.
• The 1 a.m. number. Who answers when the furnace stops on a Sunday night.
• Transit. The nearest HOP or SKIP stop, and the honest drive time to the venue you care about most.

Getting around without a car

The city has not published its final transportation plan. Its own page says details on routes, parking and accessibility will be released in the coming months. What it has announced, as of November 2026:

• Free local buses during the festival. The HOP, SKIP and JUMP routes plus a new Chautauqua Connector are planned to run free from January 21 to 31, every 10 to 15 minutes. The HOP already passes nearly every venue; Chautauqua Auditorium, the exception, gets the connector.
• Longer hours. The city says late-night and early-morning service will be expanded for midnight screenings and volunteer shifts. The HOP currently stops around 10 p.m., so watch for the actual schedule.
• Free e-bikes. Up to 5,000 festival passes for Boulder's BCycle shared e-bikes.
• Park-and-ride hubs and shuttles. Planned, with locations to come. Most venues have no parking of their own; downtown has paid city garages, mapped on the city's parking page.
• From the airport. Denver International is a 45-minute drive. RTD's AB1 bus runs to Downtown Boulder Station at 14th and Walnut for $10.
• From the suburbs and Denver. The Flatiron Flyer connects Union Station, Westminster, Broomfield, Louisville and Superior to Boulder along US 36. The BOLT runs from Longmont.

If you stay downtown, on University Hill or in Whittier, you can walk to most screenings and bus to the rest. From East or South Boulder, plan on the free buses in the evening and a car or rideshare after midnight until the late-night schedule is published.

January in Boulder

January here is colder than its reputation and sunnier than its latitude. NOAA's 1991 to 2020 normals put the average high at 47°F and the average low at 22°F, with 11.3 inches of snow across the month. Snow tends to arrive in short storms and melt within days in the sun, but north-facing sidewalks stay icy for a week. The city sits at 5,430 feet, so the sun burns and the air is dry. Pack layers, a real coat for the walk home at midnight, shoes with grip, sunglasses and sunscreen. If your rental has a driveway, confirm who clears it. A snow day before a 9 a.m. premiere is a plausible event.

Questions we get asked

Where do most people stay for Sundance in Boulder?

In private homes and condos inside the city. Boulder has about 2,900 hotel rooms and expects 85,000 or more attendees over eleven days, so the city licensed more than 1,500 homes for festival rentals. Hotels fill first for opening weekend and open up in the second week.

How much does a Sundance rental in Boulder cost?

Visit Boulder's guidance for hosts runs from $250 to $300 a night for a one-bedroom condo to $1,100 to $1,400 for a four-bedroom house, plus 10 percent within a mile of the venues and 12.835 percent in tax. Market asks in 2026 ranged from about $400 a night to more than $5,000. Two to three times a home's normal January rate is a realistic landing point.

Is it legal to rent a house in Boulder during Sundance?

Yes, if the home holds a Festival Lodging Rental License or a standard Short-Term Rental License from the City of Boulder. The festival license can only be used from January 11 to February 9, 2027. Ask for the license number and check the city's list of licensed rental properties.

Is it cheaper to stay in Denver or Louisville?

Usually, yes. Superior is about 15 minutes from downtown Boulder, Louisville about 20 and downtown Denver about 40 without traffic, and all three sit on the Flatiron Flyer bus line. The trade is the last ride home after a late screening and winter driving on US 36.

When should I book a Sundance rental in Boulder?

Now, if you need opening weekend, January 21 to 24. If you can come in the second week, you can wait for the mid-December lineup, but book before single tickets go on sale on January 8, 2027. Prefer refundable terms in a first-year market.

Do I need a car in Boulder for Sundance?

Not if you stay downtown, in Whittier or on University Hill, where most venues are a walk or a free bus away. From East or South Boulder or a nearby town, a car helps, especially after midnight. The city plans free HOP, SKIP, JUMP and Chautauqua Connector buses every 10 to 15 minutes during the festival.

How long do people stay?

The festival runs eleven days, with world premieres in the first six. Visit Boulder's price table assumes stays of four, seven or eleven nights, which is a fair guide to the minimum stays hosts ask for. Industry guests tend to come for the first week; film-goers who want cheaper beds and shorter lines come for the second.

What we still don't know

• The transit plan. Routes, late-night hours, park-and-ride sites and shuttle details are promised in the coming months.
• Where prices land. The 1,525 homes cleared to advertise have not all listed, and the ones that have are still testing numbers. December will tell.
• The hotels' 70 percent. Visit Boulder says Boulder hotels committed 70 percent of their rooms at affordable rates. No rate or room count has been published.
• Denver shuttles. CBS Colorado reported that shuttle buses are expected to connect Boulder with Denver and nearby towns. Operators, stops and fares are unannounced.
• Opening weekend's true demand. Nobody has hosted a Boulder Sundance before.

We will update this page as each of these is settled.

Sources

1. City of Boulder, Festival Lodging Rental License, read November 8, 2026.
2. City of Boulder, Tax Rates and Types, read November 8, 2026.
3. City of Boulder, Getting Around Boulder: Sundance Film Festival and Sundance Film Festival FAQ, read November 8, 2026.
4. Visit Boulder, Where to Stay, Sundance FAQ and Festival Lodging Program, read November 8, 2026.
5. Visit Boulder, Festival Home Rental Pricing Guidelines (PDF), 2026.
6. Boulder Reporting Lab, Boulder City Council approves new short-term rental licenses intended just for Sundance, September 18, 2025.
7. Boulder Reporting Lab, Boulder OKs renters subleasing homes for Sundance, April 2, 2026.
8. 9News, $100K for 10 nights? Listed rental prices raise concerns ahead of Sundance, April 29, 2026.
9. Boulder Reporting Lab via KUNC, Boulder bet $34 million to land Sundance. High lodging prices are raising concerns, June 16, 2026.
10. CBS Colorado, With Sundance Film Festival, Boulder works to balance high rental prices with affordable lodging options, June 25, 2026.
11. KUNC, How will Boulder's bus system handle Sundance?, March 20, 2026.
12. 5280, How much can you rent out your house for during Sundance?, September 17, 2026.
13. Denver7, Boulder braces for Sundance Film Festival as passes go on sale and homeowners rush to host, October 2026.
14. Your Boulder, Where to Stay for Sundance 2027 in Boulder, August 23, 2026.
15. Sundance Institute, 2025 Sundance Film Festival Attendance Recap and Economic Impact Report (PDF), July 2025.
16. Sundance Film Festival, Tickets and Official Hotels and Lodging, read November 8, 2026.
17. NOAA, U.S. Climate Normals 1991–2020, Boulder, Colorado station.

Drive times are from OpenStreetMap routing without traffic, checked November 8, 2026. Westview is a privately owned residence and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Sundance Institute or the Sundance Film Festival.