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Reykjavik: Northern Lights Hunt & Midnight Photography Tour

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Free cancellationTravelers' pick

1/7

Duration3h–5h

GroupUp to 18

LanguagesEN

PickupAt your hotel

Chasing the Aurora Over Iceland's Dark Winter Sky

You travel in a heated minibus with a guide who hunts for the best Northern Lights viewing spots around Reykjavik, moving in real time as conditions shift. The guide explains the science, photographs everyone if the lights appear, and includes hot chocolate and free retry if you don't see them. Pickup from your hotel or bus stop, photos on USB, no professional camera needed.

3h–5h

Step-by-step itinerary

Travel in heated minibus
Guide searches best viewing spots
Guide explains Northern Lights science
View and photograph Northern Lights

The Experience

Picture this: a minibus cutting through the black Icelandic night, your guide scanning the sky for the first green flicker of the aurora. You're somewhere outside Reykjavik, wrapped in warmth while the landscape disappears into darkness, and then it happens — if it does — a ribbon of light that moves like it's alive. The Northern Lights hunt from Reykjavik is exactly what it sounds like: you don't sit in one spot and hope. Your guide drives, watches the weather, checks the forecast in real time, and moves the group to wherever the best chance is that night. Some tours plant you at a viewpoint and call it done. This one keeps moving.

The minibus is heated, which matters more than it sounds when you're standing outside at midnight in Iceland. Your guide explains what you're actually looking at — the solar wind, the magnetosphere, why it happens in winter and not summer — so you're not just watching colors shift. You're understanding them. And when the lights do appear, the guide photographs everyone. You don't need a fancy camera or know how to shoot in low light. You show up, and you get the image. If the Northern Lights don't show that night, you get a free retry on another evening, no extra cost. If the weather turns bad enough that the tour cancels, you can reschedule or take a full refund.

Pickup happens from your hotel or a bus stop in Reykjavik 101, starting 30 minutes before the tour begins, so there's no scrambling to meet a guide at some landmark. You get hot chocolate during the hunt, free Wi-Fi on the minibus, and photos uploaded to a USB drive afterward. The group stays small enough that the guide can actually move and adjust, not herd thirty people into a field. It's a midnight adventure, which means late nights, but that's when the aurora actually shows.

What’s included

Your night includes hotel or bus stop pickup and drop-off in Reykjavik, transport in a comfortable heated minibus, hot chocolate during the hunt, a guide who explains the Northern Lights science and searches for the best viewing location, free professional photography if the lights appear with images on USB, free Wi-Fi on the minibus, and a free retry on another evening if the Northern Lights don't show.

Good to know

Easy physical level

Operated by Iceland Everywhere Tours

Is this one for you?Book this if you're in Reykjavik during winter and want the actual hunt for the Northern Lights rather than a static viewpoint — the moving minibus and real-time weather tracking are what make a sighting possible on a night when it might otherwise be missed.