Make Longmont your base camp for festival week

The 2027 Sundance Film Festival runs January 21 to 31 in Boulder, and every screening is in Boulder. The eating, though, does not have to be. Sixteen miles up the Diagonal Highway, Longmont is where a lot of festival visitors ended up once Boulder rooms filled, and it is a better food town than most of them expected.

The case is simple: on a night when every well-reviewed room in Boulder has been booked for months, a walkable downtown a quick run north where you can still get a table is worth more than a better restaurant you cannot get into.

What is actually there

Downtown Longmont is locally owned almost end to end, with a dozen-plus breweries folded in among the restaurants. Parkway Food Hall opened at Ken Pratt Boulevard and Main Street with eight stalls and a full bar, which is the right shape for a group that cannot agree — and for a late arrival when sitting down to a tasting menu is not the plan.

Hotel Longmont, the city’s first boutique hotel, opened downtown in late summer 2026 with a rooftop restaurant called Longmont Supply. If you are staying there, dinner is a lift ride.

Our local guide carries the places we have checked, with addresses, hours and a phone number for each.

The part that matters at 10pm

An evening screening in Boulder ends when a lot of kitchens have closed, and that is as true in Longmont as anywhere. Two things help. Downtown Longmont is compact and parking is easy, so you are not circling. And RTD’s BOLT bus runs between the two downtowns until roughly 1:25am on weekdays, which means dinner in Boulder before a film and a bus back is a real option.

So ring the kitchen before you drive anywhere late, and book where you can — see plan your visit.

Longmont and Sundance already overlap

The Longmont Museum has screened festival films for a while: a Juneteenth program of shorts curated by the festival in June 2026, a February 2026 screening of American Pachuco with director Luis Valdez and festival director Eugene Hernandez in the room, and Frida, the 2024 Sundance editing-award winner, with director Carla Gutierrez in conversation.

On price, for context: when the Daily Camera surveyed Airbnb listings for the festival’s opening night in August 2026, Boulder homes ran $183 to nearly $8,000 while Longmont sat around $77 to $113. Both will have moved since.

Sources: Visit Longmont; Longmont Museum and Downtown Longmont listings; Boulder Daily Camera, August 2026; Travel Boulder on Parkway Food Hall; Axios Boulder on Hotel Longmont; RTD Route BOLT schedule. Checked as dated.