Already mourning the loss of warm weather? There’s a festival happening in Toronto this weekend that will make you forget all about that. The Toronto Sauna Festival is bringing three days of relaxation, sweating it out and wellness immersion to the city.
The festival is essentially a marriage of every health and wellness trend in Toronto; attendees can expect meditation, breathwork, cold plunges, pilates, yoga, red light therapy, massages and more during each day of the event. It’s no surprise that Unbounded, the Canadian brand that kind of put Toronto on the map for cold plunging, is behind the event, as is Therme Group, the team behind the spa coming to the Ontario Place grounds.
It all kicks off on Friday with an opening night featuring four main events: start with a guided wellness experience titled The Four Elements, featuring indoor grounding meditation and breathwork as well as outdoor guided sauna rituals and cold exposure, followed by a live performance, an immersive sensory performance (think fire, live drums, Aufguss ritual, breathwork, cymatic light projections and more sauna sessions) and a grand finale called Free Flow, where participants can enjoy more sauna rituals and cold plunges.
Saturday offers two four-hour sessions, one of which has already sold out. Throughout your session, expect a full day of workshops so you can curate your festival experience to your needs. Choose between sound baths, face pilates, yin yoga, nervous system workshops and DJ sets. And of course, every session includes access to more than 30 unique guided sauna rituals, cold plunges, red light therapy, on-site massages and recovery experiences.
The final day on Sunday kicks off with a festival takeover by The Coffee Party (we told you this even was a who’s who of Toronto’s wellness scene!). Attendees will also be able to build their own festival schedule, with similar options to Saturday (pilates, breathwork, soul baths, restorative yoga and more).
This is a Toronto wellness event, so expect some innovation: the cold plunge section of the festival, for examples, includes prizes for whoever down-regulates the fastest, and the recover and longevity zone offers some high-end biohacking beds, IV boosters and myofascial release.
General admission to a four-hour session costs $89.99, while a full weekend pass will cost you $224.99. There are also some limited-time two-ticket and four-ticket bundle deals if you’re planning on plunging with friends. Toronto Sauna Festival is taking over Evergreen Brick Works from Oct. 2–4.