Two switch-on dates are confirmed. That is the whole of the West End so far, and it is the middle of September, which tells you something about how this year is going.
The paid half of the London Christmas season is already selling tickets. Kew has been on sale since July, Blenheim and the Chelsea light trail are booking, and Somerset House opens its presale next week. The free half, the streets that most people actually mean when they say the Christmas lights, has announced almost nothing.
Here is where that leaves you: what is confirmed, what is already on sale, what is still to come and roughly when, and the two things you should stop planning around because they are not happening.
Confirmed so far
Carnaby Street
Wednesday 4 November. The theme this year is 1990s nostalgia, which for Carnaby means the installations will be loud and boxy and extremely photographable. There are 60,000 LEDs in it, and the structures are reused from previous years rather than built from scratch, which is quietly one of the better things about how Carnaby does this.
Full event details are published in October. The switch-on itself is free and on the street.
Covent Garden
Thursday 12 November. Over 300,000 lights, a seven-week run they are calling Theatre of Christmas, and the Market Building hung with oversized gold bells, mirror balls and baubles, also reused from previous years. The tree on the West Piazza is British grown.
There is a proper public event this one: live performances, a countdown, and the button pushed from the Market Building balcony. Free, busy, and worth arriving early for if you want to see anything. More to do on the doorstep in our guide to things to do in Covent Garden.
Already on sale
This is where the confirmed season actually lives, and most of it is ticketed and outside zone one.
Christmas at Kew
13 November to 3 January. 4.20pm to 10pm daily, closed Christmas Day, closing at 9pm on Christmas Eve. Adult tickets are £29.50 off-peak and £37 peak, children four to sixteen £20 to £24, family tickets £89 to £108.
Kew is the best of London’s botanical gardens at any time of year, and this is the one night-time use of it. New this year: an installation called Infinite Choir by Squidsoup, Drift by Studio Vertigo, a floral meadow by the French collective TILT and an animated willow by ITHACA. The genuinely new thing is the first adult-only evenings the trail has ever run, on 3 and 9 December, which is the answer if you have done Kew at Christmas and spent it behind a scooter.
Christmas at Blenheim Palace
13 November to 3 January. Over a million lights on the trail, Cinderella staged inside the palace, a rink and an observation wheel, with the market running 13 November to 20 December. The peak dates, 5 and 6, 12 and 13 and 19 December, are excluded from annual pass discounts, so check before you assume your pass covers it.
Chelsea Winter Village and Illuminations
25 November to 28 December at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, daily from 4.30pm. Adult tickets from £19, children from £13, infants free. This is only its second year and it is worth saying plainly that entry to the village is ticketed, because people arrive at these expecting a free market and find a turnstile.
Lost Worlds at the Old Royal Naval College
6 to 8 and 11 to 15 November, 5.45pm to 9pm, in Greenwich. Adult £22, concessions £16.50, family £68, with relaxed SEND sessions at the start of each evening. Luxmuralis are projecting onto Wren’s buildings, including a piece made for the dome to mark 300 years of the Painted Hall. Nine nights only and it sells.
Hyde Park Winter Wonderland
19 November to 3 January, closed Christmas Day. Entry is free if you spend £25 on rides, attractions or food, and there is £1 off-peak entry on Monday to Thursday sessions in November. No booking fees this year. The rink is from £11.50 adults and £8.50 children. New for 2026 is a K-Pop circus from Gandeys and a bar kept at minus ten degrees. Our full guide to Winter Wonderland has the rest.
And two more worth booking now
Hogwarts in the Snow runs at the Warner Bros. Studio Tour from 14 November to 17 January. The Lights Express on the Epping Ongar Railway runs 14 November to 2 January, with three musical themes this year.
Still to be announced
Everything below has no 2026 date from anybody, and that includes the venues themselves. Oxford Street, Regent Street, Bond Street, Piccadilly, Leicester Square, St Christopher’s Place, Marylebone High Street, Seven Dials, Kingly Court, Fitzrovia, St James’s, Mayfair and Chinatown. New West End Company, which runs the Oxford, Regent and Bond Street displays, has published nothing on Christmas at all.
Nor has anything landed for King’s Road, Sloane Square, Duke of York Square, Belgravia, Coal Drops Yard and King’s Cross, the Southbank Centre winter market, Leadenhall Market, Spitalfields, Greenwich, Richmond, Wimbledon, Hampstead, Upper Street, Brixton, Peckham or Camden.
The one you can plan around loosely is Trafalgar Square. The Norwegian tree is lit on the first Thursday of December almost every year, which in 2026 is 3 December, but Westminster has not confirmed it and the council’s own page has not been touched since 2016. Treat it as very likely rather than booked. Our guide to Trafalgar Square covers the square the rest of the year.
One warning while you are searching. There are 2023 dates circulating dressed up as 2026 ones, and at least one widely shared listing has Belgravia down for 15 November, which is a Sunday this year and almost certainly a recycled date. If a date lands on the wrong day of the week, it is old.
Two that are not coming back
Ice Rink Canary Wharf is not running this winter. The operators have said they are taking a break for the 2026 season and hope to return in future. If Canary Wharf was your annual rink, it is not there.
The Battersea Power Station Light Festival has ended in its previous form. After five years the organisers have said they are evolving the programme and will not be staging it for 2026. That is the January light festival, not the Christmas lights or the Glide rink at the same site, which are separate things.
Two more that have gone quiet: neither Eltham Palace nor Kenwood House has published anything for 2026, and both ran illuminated events in previous years. Also worth knowing, the Hampton Court light trail does not appear in this year’s festive programme. The palace is doing the rink, the Festive Fayre and its Winter Palace dressing instead, so if you were going for the trail, go for something else.
Where to skate
Skate at Somerset House runs 11 November to 10 January, £15 to £28.50 adults and £11 children, with the presale opening at 10am on Friday 25 September. Hampton Court Palace has its rink from 20 November to 3 January, first session 10am and last at 8pm, with the Festive Fayre on 4 to 6 and 11 to 13 December.
Three more are listed but not yet confirmed on the venues’ own pages, so check before you travel: Glide at Battersea Power Station from 6 November, Skate Leicester Square from 31 October, and the rink at the Queen’s House in Greenwich from 18 November. Our full London ice skating guide has the rest.
The London x London Take: If you are the sort of person who plans Christmas, book the trails this week and leave the streets alone until October. Kew’s good dates go first and the two adult-only nights on 3 and 9 December will be the first to sell, because everybody who has ever queued behind a pushchair on that trail wants them. The streets need no planning at all: they are free, they switch on within a fortnight of each other in early November, and you will walk under them by accident. And if you want the one genuinely unmissable thing on this list, it is Lost Worlds at Greenwich, which is nine nights, is projected onto Wren, and will be gone before the Oxford Street date is even announced.
Practical tips
- Go on a weeknight. Carnaby and Covent Garden on the first Saturday after a switch-on are close to unwalkable
- The lights stay up until early January. There is no need to fight the crowds in the switch-on week
- Most street displays run from mid-afternoon to around 11pm. The best hour is the first after dark, when the sky still has colour in it
- Check the day of the week on any date you find elsewhere. It is the fastest way to catch a recycled listing
- Book the ticketed trails before the streets are announced. They are the ones that sell out
More of the season in our guides to London at Christmas, London Christmas markets and Christmas Day in London, plus the streets you have seen on screen in our piece on London Christmas filming locations.
