Montreal International Jazz Festival

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Montreal International Jazz Festival
Festival International de Jazz de Montréal at night
Genre	Jazz
Dates	June/July
Location(s)	Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Coordinates	45°30′N 73°34′W / 45.500°N 73.567°W / 45.500; -73.567
Years active	1980–present
Founded by	Alain Simard
Attendance	2,000,000 (2023, 10 days total)
Capacity	200,000 (all stages combined)
Website	montrealjazzfest.com

The Montreal International Jazz Festival is an annual jazz festival held in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The Montreal Jazz Fest holds the 2004 Guinness World Record as the world's largest jazz festival.^[1] Every year it features roughly 3,000 artists from 30-odd countries, more than 650 concerts (including 450 free outdoor performances), and welcomes over 2 million visitors (12.5% of whom are tourists) as well as 300 accredited journalists. The festival takes place at 20 different stages, which include free outdoor stages and indoor concert halls.^[1]

A major part of the city's downtown core is closed to traffic for ten days, as free outdoor shows are open to the public and held on many stages at the same time, from noon until midnight. The "festival's Big Event concerts typically draw between 100,000 and 150,000 people",^[2] and can occasionally exceed 200,000.^[3] Shows are held in a wide variety of venues, from relatively small jazz clubs to the large concert halls of Place des Arts. Some of the outdoor shows are held on the cordoned-off streets, while others are in terraced parks.