Current conditions – after the first week of 2026/2027 winter season

The new ice cave season has just started here in Vatnajökull National Park on October 1st and it’s time for the first brief update on the conditions, which you can expect if you book a tour with us in the upcoming weeks. Or with pretty much any other company, because there just isn’t a big variety of ice caves available at the moment and the same places are visited by many different operators. This of course can still change in the next weeks or months, especially after one of many autumn storms. October is not yet a real winter month after all and the glacier is still melting and forming new interesting features, which we are closely monitoring. 

I’m focusing here purely on the area of Breiðamerkurjökull, an outlet glacier closest to Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon, where most ice cave tours depart from. Although you can also visit smaller ice caves on a glacier tour in Skaftafell, it is here, around the Glacier Lagoon where the biggest and bluest ice caves are found every winter and that’s also why the highest number and biggest variety of tours is offered here. That includes our tours as well. 

Lagoon Ice Cave (Verðandi), end of September 2026

When guides go out on the glacier to look for new caves or just to explore it, we call it scouting. This began again already in August, long before the official opening of the new season. It was established already at that time that only one part of the glacier – it’s western side – was looking promising. This is opposite to the previous seasons when ice caves existed in more than one area of this vast outlet glacier and when the touring traffic spread out between them. Very quickly we knew that this was not going to be the case this year. Unfortunately all the interesting caves and tunnels on the east side of the glacier, including the famous ABC – Amazing Blue Cave, have melted away completely and nothing comparable has formed in their place, at least that we or anyone else knows of at the moment.

On the other hand a couple of really interesting glacial features have been found on the west side and it was clear that these were going to be the places which we would visit once the season starts. This assumption proved to be correct. Following the water flowing out of the glacier allowed to pinpoint a few locations and one of them upon visiting revealed a brand new big ice cave. The guide who found it called it Verðandi to honour an old Norse myth, but as this cave is located right on the edge of the Glacier Lagoon, another name is now also commonly used – Lagoon Cave. When it was discovered it had almost no blue ice at all and it was very dark, but this is normal in summer months – the accumulation of volcanic ash and other natural dirt on the surface of the glacier blocks most of the sunlight and doesn’t allow it to refract, which is where the amazing blue colors would come from. Autumn rains and winds are responsible for cleaning the glacier and making it blue, which is already happening slowly now in October.

One of smaller moulins hiding crystal clear blue ice, 1st of October 2026

We at Ice Walkers specialize in longer hikes and more remote ice caves, so together with other guide friends we set up for a search higher on the glacier which also proved to be very successful. At the bottom of one of glacial drain holes, so called “moulins” I myself have discovered a long and winding narrow ice tunnel with striking blue colors, which guides now call Iceman. It resembles a slot canyon, which is not unsual on the glacier as it was carved by a stream of water. A couple other similar smaller tunnels and canyons as well as open blue moulins have been found nearby making that area our go-to place for longer hikes. It is typical for the glacier to start looking blue earlier in its upper part while the edge is still dirty after the whole summer of melting.

The first few days of the season are always a little rough, when multiple tour operators, smaller and bigger, all try to figure out the best way to conduct their tours without interrupting each other too much. Bad weather which hit around that time certainly didn’t help, only making things more chaotic. The Lagoon Cave was actually flooded for the first 3 days of October, when the level of the Glacier Lagoon rose due to high amount of rain and water flowed into the cave. But as soon as the rain decreased and the temperature dropped the conditions suddenly became right for ice cave tours and so far they remain like that. Cold weather is our best friend here.

Calving face of the glacier, October 2026

A vast majority of tours offered in the area, especially the 3-hour long ones visit only the Lagoon Cave. At the moment this requires about a 45 minute walk from the car park (one way), but it is about to get shorter soon when the road gets extended closer to the glacier in the upcoming weeks. The number of groups visiting the cave in one day is pretty high, which creates a steady flow of groups through it. Each group gets to spend a maximum of 20-25 minutes inside. Most of the cave is still black and the blue colour is still limited, but we can see it improving slightly everyday. An additional big highlight of the tour is certainly the perfect view of the calving face of the glacier right outside the cave’s main entrance – something which can normally only be seen from a zodiac boat our on the Glacier Lagoon, as it’s simply too far away from any car park. Most groups visit the cave in the morning or afternoon, while lunchtime is typically the most quiet. At Ice Walkers we too offer a shorter tour “Visit a Natural Blue Ice Cave from Jökulsárlón” which currently goes to the Lagoon Cave, with a departure time at 12.00 aimed precisely at avoiding the largest crowds. This tour is family-friendly and only requires a basic level of fitness.

Blue tunnel called “Iceman”, October 2026

Our top favorite however are the blue tunnels higher on the glacier and most of our clients so far share this opinion. Therefore our longer 6-hour tour “Glacier Hike and a Remote Ice Cave from Jökulsárlón” is focused purely on blue ice exploration, smething we know that amazes people the most. On each tour we try to visit a couple of blue tunnels or moulins, some smaller and some bigger. Sometimes it’s possible to add the Lagoon Cave to this tour as well, but the distance between them is quite long and only doable in really good weather. The best part of this tour is the fact that it’s never the same and sometimes when we hike a bit further we still find new places which haven’t been visited by anyone yet. The total hiking distance is usually between 6 and 8 kms on mostly flat glacier, which definitely makes this tour a little challenging option of the adventurous ones.

This is how things look now and even though the conditions are certainly not ideal yet for ice caving they are actually better at this time of year than in the previous years. We are sure that a lot more is still to come and along with other guides we are still actively scouting the glacier to make our tours even better.