Most festivals are held in a field outside a town. This one is held on a mountain pass at 1283 metres, in late April, and the only hotel up there is taken. The Alps View Festival returns to La Vue-des-Alpes, in the canton of Neuchâtel, on 23 and 24 April 2027 for its fourth edition. If you are travelling from abroad, the music is the straightforward part and the logistics are not, which is what this article is for. The Hôtel Beaulac, on the shore of Lake Neuchâtel below the pass, works as a base for the weekend, and you can book your nights now at beaulac.ch.
What is confirmed for 2027
The festival runs on Friday 23 and Saturday 24 April 2027 at La Vue-des-Alpes. It is the fourth edition of an event that has become a fixture of the electronic music calendar in French-speaking Switzerland in only three years.
Advance ticket prices are announced at 39 francs for the Friday, 39 francs for the Saturday, and 67 francs for a pass covering both days. The line-up and running times were not published at the time of writing: the official site, alpsviewfestival.ch, is the only reliable source on that.
For a sense of the scale, the 2026 edition brought together NTO and Joachim Pastor in a first-time duo set, along with Creeds, Leblanc and the duo Schrotthagen, plus eight Swiss acts including Elina, Rose Megix and Neuchâtel’s own Unterschrift. It also introduced a new stage design and an early-evening apéro format. One of the two nights sold out.
The thing people work out too late: where to sleep
This is where the festival differs from every other one in the region. La Vue-des-Alpes is a pass, not a village. There is one hotel on it, and at previous editions that hotel was reserved in its entirety for festival-goers for the weekend. Accommodation on site is therefore gone before general ticket sales even open.
The conclusion is simple: you sleep in the valley. The two towns on either side of the pass are La Chaux-de-Fonds to the north and Neuchâtel to the south. At the 2026 edition, free shuttle buses ran from La Chaux-de-Fonds with return journeys towards Neuchâtel. The 2027 arrangements have not been announced, but serving both sides of the pass is likely to continue: check the detail on the festival site a few weeks beforehand.
If you are flying in, Neuchâtel is the easier of the two to reach. The practical route is Zurich or Geneva airport, then a train with one connection. Neuchâtel station is served every thirty minutes by InterCity trains on the Lausanne-Biel axis, hourly by services to and from Basel, and hourly by the InterRegio that climbs to La Chaux-de-Fonds. Buy your ticket through to Neuchâtel rather than to the airport city: Swiss rail ticketing treats the whole journey as one.
April at 1283 metres: what to pack
This is the standard mistake. You book in January, check the weather for Neuchâtel the day before, see fifteen degrees and head up the pass in a light jacket. The pass is a thousand metres higher than the town, and in late April there can still be snow on the ground and temperatures near freezing once it gets dark.
A few markers for the bag:
- Closed, waterproof shoes, because the ground on a pass in spring is mud and frozen grass, not a club floor.
- A proper warm layer, not an overshirt. The gap between eleven at night and three in the morning is severe at that altitude.
- Something windproof. Wind is the most underestimated factor on a Jura ridge.
- A fixed plan for getting back, shuttle times included, rather than improvising at closing.
A base in town changes exactly this. You drop a thousand metres to sleep somewhere warm, and the next morning you are on the lakefront instead of on a windswept campsite.
The rest of the weekend
A festival that starts in the evening leaves two full days free, and the canton gives you enough to fill them without getting in a car.
The lakefront can be walked or cycled straight from the hotel. Neuchâtel Castle and the collegiate church are two minutes away in the old town. And if you want to stay on the altitude theme, the funicular up Chaumont climbs past a thousand metres from La Coudre, with a view over the three lakes and, in clear weather, the Alps.
Worth knowing if you stay at least one night in the canton: the Neuchâtel Tourist Card is issued to you free of charge and covers public transport plus around forty attractions, museums included. Our dedicated article sets out exactly what it contains, which matters more here than usual given how much of this weekend involves getting up and down a mountain.
Book now rather than in March
Previous editions filled quickly, and accommodation across the canton follows the same curve as ticket sales. An April weekend with a festival of this size means rooms in Neuchâtel go months ahead, particularly for two consecutive nights.
The Hôtel Beaulac has ninety-six rooms across seven categories, facing the lake or the old town, and a car park if you are driving up to the pass. If you are coming as a group, state the number of rooms when you enquire: multiple bookings are easier to settle in one go. Book at beaulac.ch, and keep an eye on alpsviewfestival.ch for the 2027 line-up and shuttles.
