When having a festive wander around London at Christmas time, there are a few essential spots to poke your head in at. Covent Garden’s giant 55ft Christmas tree – adorned with 30,000 LED lights – and glittering night display falls firmly in this category, and they’ve (finally) flipped the switch to turn on all the decorations and lights. It’s now a stunning festive wonderland that you simply have to visit.
Talking of lights, the overall total at the piazza is an eyewatering 260,000 lights, with the LED beams sparkling across the square for the entire festive season. Together the truly give the area that seasonal glow that we’ve become used to (and then some!). Last year, the display was made up of 140,000 lights. They’ve one-upped themselves this year by almost doubling the number!
Christmas time at Covent Garden
Now that the lights are up, that doesn’t mean an end to the festive activities. There are all sorts of goings-on throughout the Chrismas season. The lights switch on merely signals the start of their seven-week calendar of events. Expect pop-ups, family-friendly experiences, surprise performances, and, of course, plenty of mulled wine and food to munch on as we tackle the cold weather with a swarm of festivity.
Santa’s sleigh will also be making a grand return, with the reindeer dropping it off at the square to provide a perfect photo opportunity before heading over to a ‘Festive Thursday’ for live entertainment and shopping into the night. You can catch a Christmas Candlelight concert too, where music and candles illuminate the festive season.
While they love to whip out the returning crowd-pleasers, Covent Garden are also well-versed in giving people a new flavour with each Christmas that passes in the form of eye-catching decoration. Last year, we saw 40 gigantic bells with bows and baubles taking to the Market Building to chime the calls of festivity. Meanwhile, this year they’ve debuted a stunning canopy of lights over Seven Dials – with 150,000 lights giving the area a literal glow up.