Regent Street switches on Thursday 5 November, traffic-free 5pm to 9pm, and Covent Garden on 12 November. Oxford Street gets Harry Potter lights; date TBC.

Regent Street’s Christmas lights switch on on Thursday 5 November 2026, with the street closed to traffic from 5pm to 9pm for the evening. The Crown Estate, which runs Regent Street, announced the date on 1 October. Covent Garden follows on Thursday 12 November. Oxford Street and Bond Street have not yet given a switch-on date.

Updated 17 October: Regent Street has confirmed Thursday 5 November, traffic free 5pm to 9pm, with the “Spirit of Christmas” lights returning with “a new twist for 2026”. New West End Company announced on 7 October that Oxford Street’s star lights will be joined this year by illuminated Harry Potter designs, in a partnership with HBO Max; it says the switch-on date will follow “in the coming weeks”.

The quick answer

  • Regent Street: Thursday 5 November. Closed to traffic 5pm to 9pm, with family entertainment and in-store events.
  • Covent Garden: Thursday 12 November; time still “coming soon”. See our Covent Garden lights page.
  • Oxford Street: date not announced. Star lights plus new Harry Potter illuminations.
  • Bond Street and Carnaby: no 2026 date published.
  • Cost: free to watch everywhere.

Regent Street: Thursday 5 November

The Crown Estate’s announcement, dated 1 October 2026, says the lights are “returning from Thursday 5th November, with a traffic-free event and evening of exclusive in store experiences”. The street closes to traffic from 5pm to 9pm. The “Spirit of Christmas” design has hung over Regent Street since 2016, and the Crown Estate says there are “new details waiting to be discovered” this year. It has not published a line-up or a switch-on time within the closure.

That is a Thursday, as Regent Street’s switch-ons usually are, and this year it comes before Oxford Street rather than after it.

Oxford Street: Harry Potter lights, date to come

On 7 October New West End Company announced a partnership with HBO Max timed to the Christmas launch of the new Harry Potter television series. Alongside the usual star lights, Oxford Street will get “a series of specially created illuminated designs” from the Harry Potter stories. The UK’s largest official Harry Potter shop opens on Oxford Street on 4 November, the announcement says. The switch-on date, programme and images of the lights “will be released in the coming weeks”. Our Oxford Street Christmas lights page has the detail, including what the traffic-free street means for getting there.

Where the announcement will come from

Street Who runs the lights Where the date appears
Oxford Street New West End Company oxfordstreet.co.uk and newwestend.com
Bond Street New West End Company newwestend.com
Regent Street and St James’s The Crown Estate regentstreetonline.com
Carnaby Street Shaftesbury Capital carnaby.co.uk

New West End Company is the business improvement district that pays for and programmes the Oxford Street and Bond Street displays. Regent Street is a separate operation entirely, run by The Crown Estate, which is why the two streets have always switched on days or weeks apart rather than together.

A trap on Oxford Street’s own site

Oxford Street’s own website is still running its 2025 Christmas pages. The festive articles in its sitemap are all dated 2025, and the most recent of them is headlined “Celebrate Christmas 2025 on Oxford Street”. Read casually, they look current.

Regent Street’s news feed also still carries an older article at a URL ending in “2025” that is dated 6 November 2024 on the page. The 2026 date is in the 1 October 2026 post. If you find a date on either site, check what year the page was written.

What happened last year, as a guide only

This is the pattern, not a promise.

Oxford Street switched on Monday 3 November 2025. That comes from New West End Company’s own copy: “we kick off the festive celebrations for the nation on Monday 3rd November when our Sky Full of Stars lights will shine bright above Oxford Street.” The charity partner was Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity, a continuation of an existing partnership.

For scale, the Oxford Street display has run at 5,000 star lights in recent years. A Press Association caption held on New West End Company’s own site puts the 2022 switch-on at Wednesday 2 November 2022 with 5,000 stars, which tells you this is a first-week-of-November event and has been for a while.

If Oxford Street follows that pattern, its switch-on would fall in the first days of November, close to the Harry Potter shop opening on 4 November. That is our reading of past years, not an announcement; we will add the date when New West End Company publishes it.

One December date that is confirmed

If you want something in the diary now, Hyde Park Winter Wonderland is confirmed to run from 19 November 2026 to 3 January 2027, closed on Christmas Day, with £1 entry on November weekdays. Leicester Square’s Christmas market opens earlier still, on Saturday 31 October.

Queen’s Park Community Council also runs a Winter Festival in Queen’s Park Gardens on the second Saturday in December every year, which puts it on 12 December 2026, though the programme has not been published.

Getting to the switch-on

The switch-on evenings are the single busiest pedestrian hours of the West End year, and Oxford Circus station is routinely made exit-only or closed to interchange when crowds build. Assume you will be walking further than you planned.

Driving is a poor idea and, on Oxford Street itself, increasingly not an option: see our coverage of the Oxford Street pedestrianisation decision. If you are parking anywhere in the W1 area, our Westminster parking zones and hours page explains why the meters stop at 6.30pm and why that is not the good news it sounds like. Live closures and works are on our Westminster roadworks and travel page.

Sources