Campsites Open in Winter in Iceland: The 23 That Publish a Year-Round Season

Short answer

23 campsites in Iceland publish a season that covers mid-January. All 23are named below, every one of them because its own operator says “open all year” — not because we inferred it. In July that figure is 112, so winter removes about 89 of the campsites that publish a checkable season. Where a rate is published it runs 2,200–3,500 ISK per adult per night. 180 of our 315 campsites publish no season at all, so treat 23 as the number that say so, not the number that exist.

Ring Road (R1) openHighlands: 1 of 7 monitored roads closed or impassableVegagerðin, updated just now

What is it doing at Egilsstaðir right now?

At the Egilsstaðir campsite it is 6°C, feels like 4°C, with wind of 2 m/s gusting to 3 m/s and overcast. Daylight today runs 05:33–20:23 (14 h 50 m). Egilsstaðir is the year-round site farthest from Reykjavík and the one an East Fjords winter route depends on. In January the daylight here is about four hours.

Data verified 1 September 2026, 01:30 · source: Open-Meteo, at the campsite’s own coordinates · refreshes every 10 minutes

Campsites open in mid-January (23 sites)

Campsite	Region	Open all year?	ISK/night	Facilities
Ásbrandsstaðir, Vopnafirði	east-iceland	Yes	—	Electricity, Shower, Kitchen, Laundry, Grey-water disposal
Djúpivogur	east-iceland	Yes	—	Electricity, Shower, Kitchen, Laundry
Egilsstaðir	east-iceland	Yes	2,950	Electricity, Shower, Laundry, Grey-water disposal
Fossárdalur	east-iceland	Yes	2,500	Electricity, Shower, Laundry
Hengifoss	east-iceland	Yes	2,800	Electricity, Shower, Grey-water disposal
Úthlíð, Biskupstungu	highlands	Yes	—	Electricity, Shower, Laundry
Vogar	north-iceland	Yes	2,450	Electricity, Shower, Kitchen, Grey-water disposal
Airport camping - Sandgerði	reykjanes	Yes	2,200	Electricity, Shower, Laundry, Grey-water disposal
Garðskagi	reykjanes	Yes	—	Electricity, Grey-water disposal
Tjaldsvæðið á Ljósafossi	reykjavik	Yes	—	Electricity, Shower, Kitchen, Laundry, Grey-water disposal
Hellishólar, Fljótshlíð	south-coast	Yes	3,500	Electricity, Shower, Laundry
Hraunborgir Grímsnesi	south-coast	Yes	—	Electricity, Shower, Grey-water disposal, Pool, Hot tub
Selfoss - Gesthús	south-coast	Yes	—	Electricity, Shower, Kitchen, Laundry, Grey-water disposal, Pool, Hot tub
Skaftafell	south-coast	Yes	—	Electricity, Shower, Laundry, Grey-water disposal
Á, Skarðsströnd	west-iceland	Yes	—	Electricity, Shower, Laundry
Bjarteyjarsandur	west-iceland	By arrangement	—	Electricity, Shower
Grundarfjörður	west-iceland	Yes	—	Electricity, Pool
Hverinn, Kleppjárnsreykjum	west-iceland	Yes	2,200	Electricity, Shower, Laundry, Grey-water disposal, Pool
Laugar í Sælingsdal	west-iceland	Yes	2,500	Electricity, Pool
Snorrastaðir	west-iceland	Yes	—	Electricity, Shower, Kitchen
Stykkishólmur	west-iceland	Yes	—	Electricity, Shower, Laundry, Grey-water disposal, Pool
Tjaldsvæðið Djúpadal	westfjords	Yes	2,200	Electricity, Shower, Grey-water disposal, Pool, Hot tub
Þingeyraroddi	westfjords	Yes	2,380	Electricity, Shower, Laundry, Grey-water disposal, Pool, Hot tub

Every row is here because the campsite’s own text says it is open all year, cited from tjalda.is. Nothing on this page is inferred from facilities, region or the fact that a site looks like the sort of place that would stay open.

“By arrangement” is not the same promise. Bjarteyjarsandur says“open all year” and, in the same sentence, “upon request at other times of the year”. Read literally that is an all-year season; read practically it means phone first. It has its own value in the column rather than sitting in the list as if you could just drive up in February.

Where they are: west-iceland 7 · east-iceland 5 · south-coast 4 · reykjanes 2 · westfjords 2 · highlands 1 · north-iceland 1 · reykjavik 1. The clusters are West Iceland and the South Coast, which is the half of the country a winter trip realistically covers, plus a run of sites around Egilsstaðir and the Eastfjords. None are in the interior: the F-roads are shut, so the question never arises. Rates are the operator’s own current-season adult rate where one is published; a dash means none is, not that it is free.

When the rest of them shut

The season does not taper. Of the 112 campsites whose season we can read, 50 end their season in September and another 22 in October — so the country goes from 98 open in mid-September to 38 in mid-October to 26 in November. Three quarters of the closures happen in six weeks.

Going the other way, 57 sites open in May and 26 more in June, which is why a trip in the first half of May feels like a different country from one in the second half of June. The month-by-month page has the full calendar with the opening and closing counts for all twelve.

The winter sites, plotted

Every campsite on the interactive map — the winter list clusters west and south, with an eastern run around Egilsstaðir.

23 open in JanuaryOpen the map

What we do not know, and why it matters here

180 of our 315 campsites publish no opening season at all. They are not on the list above, and their absence is not evidence they are shut. Most are small municipal sites and OpenStreetMap entries with no operator listing behind them. On a summer page this barely matters; on a winter page it is the whole uncertainty, so it is stated here rather than left for a reader to discover.

The most-recommended winter campsite in Iceland is not on our list. Every rival guide opens with Reykjavík Campsite in Laugardalur and says it is open 365 days a year. Our source publishes no season for it, so a page built honestly from that source cannot list it — and inventing the row would be exactly the failure this whole method exists to avoid. Its own page is here; check with the site before you rely on it.

A further 23campsites publish a season we cannot read into a date — free text in formats like “summer”, a phone number, or a season dated to a past year. Those are shown verbatim on each site’s own page and are excluded from every count here, because a season we half-understand is worse than one we admit we do not.

Frequently
asked questions

How many campsites are open in Iceland in winter?

23 publish a season that covers mid-January, and they are all listed on this page. That is a floor, not a ceiling: 180 of our 315 campsites publish no season at all, so the honest answer is "23 that say so, and an unknown number that do not say". No rival guide gives a number with a method behind it — most name three to eight sites in prose and move on.

Is Reykjavík Campsite open in winter?

Rival guides all say yes, 365 days a year. We cannot confirm it from our source: the Laugardalur site publishes no opening season on tjalda.is, so it does not appear in the computed list on this page. That is a gap in our data rather than evidence it is closed, and it is named here rather than papered over. Check with the site directly before relying on it.

Can you camp in Iceland in December or January?

Legally, yes, at an open campsite. Practically it is a different activity from summer camping: you are in the dark for most of the day, the wind does more damage than the cold, and tent camping in an Icelandic winter storm is genuinely dangerous. Almost everyone doing this is in a heated campervan and using the site for water, power and a warm building. The sites that stay open are the ones with a heated service house.

Do winter campsites still have showers and electricity?

Usually, and that is exactly why they can stay open — a site with a heated service block keeps its water running. The facilities column in the table below shows what each operator lists, though several publish nothing at all. Electric hookup matters more in winter than any other facility: it is what keeps a campervan's heater running overnight without draining the battery.

Which region has the most winter campsites?

West Iceland and the South Coast, which is convenient, because those are the two regions a winter trip actually reaches. The East has a cluster around Egilsstaðir and the Eastfjords. The highlands have none that count — the F-roads are shut, so the question does not arise.

Do I need a 4x4 to reach a winter campsite?

Not for most of them — nearly all are on the Ring Road or a paved side road. What you need is winter tyres, which are a legal requirement from 1 November to 14 April, and the discipline to read the road conditions before you set off rather than after. The live road strip at the top of this page is the same Vegagerðin feed that drives our road-conditions pages.