About this guide
Visit Longyearbyen is an independent travel guide to Longyearbyen and the tours that start there, from the polar night to the midnight sun. It is written by Patrick Kühne, a travel publisher based in Germany.
Not the official tourist office
This site has no connection to Visit Svalbard, to the local council or to any tour operator. The official tourist information is Visit Svalbard, run by Visit Svalbard AS, a company owned by the Svalbard tourism council. Its tourist information centre is at the top of the pedestrian street in Longyearbyen, and its website is visitsvalbard.com.
The Governor of Svalbard (Sysselmesteren) represents the Norwegian government on the archipelago and is also the police and environmental authority. On polar bear protection, firearms, distances to wildlife and travel outside the settlements, the Governor's pages at sysselmesteren.no have the last word.
Where the facts come from
Dates, distances, rules and figures on this site come from Visit Svalbard, the Governor of Svalbard, Avinor, Statistics Norway, the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, Store norske leksikon, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and the Svalbard Museum. Sunrise, sunset and twilight times are taken from the US Naval Observatory. Each page lists the sources it is based on, and we checked them in October 2026.
Sources do not always agree. Visit Svalbard, for example, gives the polar night as 11 November to 30 January, while the sun is in fact below the horizon from late October to mid-February. Where that happens we explain the difference or leave the detail out.
How tours are chosen
A tour appears here when it starts in Longyearbyen, fits the topic of the page and has a clear season. Duration, pickup, age limits, licence rules and what is included come from the tour pages. Tours with consistently weak reviews are left out. A few newer tours with hardly any reviews are listed where nothing else covers the activity, such as an overnight stay in an ice cave.
Some tours visit Barentsburg and Pyramiden, which are run by the Russian state-owned company Trust Arktikugol. Visit Svalbard currently does not market trips there. The tour description says what a visit includes.
A tour drops off the site automatically when the booking platform stops listing it.
How the site earns money
Tour cards and the comparison tables link to GetYourGuide and, for a tour that is not listed there, to Viator. When you book through one of these links we receive a commission, and your price stays the same. Prices and ratings are loaded from the booking platform and are not written by us.
We do not sell tours and we are not a tour operator. Questions about a booking go to the platform or to the operator.
Photos
The photos come from Unsplash and Pexels and illustrate the activities. Not every picture was taken near Longyearbyen; captions describe only what the picture shows and name the photographer.
Contact
Contact details are in the legal notice.