Name: Festival of Lights
Start: 2026-12-05
End: 2026-12-08
Location: Lyon

For four evenings in December, Lyon hands its squares, façades, parks and river banks to light artists, and the people of the city still set small coloured candles on their window sills — a gesture first made on 8 December 1852. Everything is free, and more than two million people come.

Candles on the window sill

In 1852 Lyon decided to raise a statue of the Virgin Mary on the hill of Fourvière, above the city. The inauguration was set for 8 September; flooding delayed the delivery of the statue, and the ceremony was moved to 8 December, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. That evening the weather was bad enough for the official ceremonies to be abandoned. Then the sky cleared, and the people of Lyon put lit candles along their window ledges of their own accord. The city has repeated the gesture every year since.

The candles are called lumignons — small flames in coloured glass cups, set in a row on the sill. Nothing about them is organised. They are the part of the festival that belongs to the households rather than to the municipality, and they are still lit in streets where no installation has been planned.

From the windows to the façades

The custom lasted through the twentieth century and changed shape more than once: by the 1960s it had become a competition between illuminated shop windows, above all among the food shops, and it marked the opening of the Christmas season. The turn came in 1989, when Lyon adopted its first Plan Lumière and became the first city in Europe to light its own architecture as a whole rather than building by building. The festival as it is now — light works commissioned from artists, projections on the great façades, installations in parks and outer districts — took its name and its four evenings between 1999 and 2001.

Four evenings, no ticket

The 2026 edition runs from Saturday 5 to Tuesday 8 December. The works are laid out across about twenty sites: Place des Terreaux and the town hall, Place Bellecour, the quays of the Saône and the Rhône, the Parc de la Tête d'Or, and squares in districts well away from the centre. The programme, with the exact hours each evening, is published on the city's site in the autumn; there is no ticket for any of it, and the City of Lyon pays for the festival with co-producers for individual works.

The 2025 edition drew more than two million visitors over the four evenings, and hotels in the city were 83 per cent full in the week around it. Book a room early, and expect to walk: the centre is largely closed to cars, and the crowd moves at the pace of the crowd.

Visiting with respect

Good to know

Everything is free and nothing is ticketed; the works are spread across some twenty sites, so walk a route rather than trying to see all of them.
If you are staying in an apartment, put a few lumignons on the window sill on 8 December. That is the festival's oldest and simplest form.
Follow the one-way flows marked on the bridges and in the narrow streets of the Presqu'île; the stewards turn them around as the crowd builds.

Avoid

Do not stand in front of a doorway or a lit window sill to take a photograph — people live behind them.
Do not fly a drone over the works or the crowd.

Stay safe

Two million visitors in four evenings is a dense crowd. Keep children within reach and agree on a meeting point.
Thieves and pickpockets work crowds in France; keep valuables out of outer pockets and your bag closed and across your body.
Terrorists are very likely to try to carry out attacks in France, including at crowded events. Stay aware of your surroundings and follow the instructions of the police.