Michigan Tech Winter Carnival snow statues are always a big hit with folks and this year’s creations are works of art once again. The theme this year was “Through Ice & Snow, To Space We Go!” Thanks to Visit Keweenaw we get a look at the work being done on the statues during the All-Nighter in today’s first three photos.

Then the bottom three photos are the winners for the Overall Month-Long statue building, which are ‘out of this world’! Many hours go into building these month-long statues... the winners are as follows:

1st: Phi Kappa Tau "Keweenaw in Another Universe"
2nd: Tau Kappa Epsilon "Zathura"
3rd: Delta Zeta & Delta Sigma Phi "Futurama"

Today’s video from Michigan Technological University shares some of the 2026 Snow Statue Winners from the MTU Winter Carnival Statue building also. The lead-in says: “Drones lit the sky, cheers echoed from the broomball rinks, and Michigan Tech Huskies built all night as the 104th Winter Carnival launched in Houghton, Michigan. Statues, which followed the theme “Through Ice and Snow to Space We Go,” were judged on criteria ranging from cleanliness of snow to artistic detail in both the month-long and all-night categories.”

To see photos of all the statues and winners, click on the following link for the official Michigan Tech Winter Carnival website: MTU Winter Carnival 2026

Some of the most impressive improvements since back in our day is the expert use of clear ice. That and the expertise in the use of the colored ice lettering has really kicked it up a notch.

What talent goes into all of this....thank you
Tech...this has to bring in tons of visitors!

These photos and video are so great. I was
wondering when we were going to see some pictures
of this. We've seen them as they're being built and
you could tell they were going to be great!

That was some very impressive and interesting work done this year. I haven't been keeping track over the years since I was on the construction end of things, but the number of month-long entries seems substantially lower today. That was over 50 years ago.

The quantity and quality of the all-nighter statues seems to have gone WAY up though. The organization of the "all-nighter" stuff is far more elaborate with a lot of participants doing more than building statutes. The number of different events is far greater. Except for the Stage Review, they all seem to fall into an athletic category of sorts. Good job.

I remember there was a beard contest with different subcategories. One year, when I was taking pictures for The Lode newspaper at the beard judging, someone talked me into entering. I ended up winning the side-burn category, LOL.