For most families in Utah Valley, the drive to see the Christmas lights on Temple Square is not a question of whether but of which night, and the honest answer for the last seven years has been "the year the temple is finished." That year is almost here. The Salt Lake Temple, closed at the end of 2019 for the largest renovation in its history, is in its final winter behind the construction fencing; the church has set a public open house for April 5 through October 1, 2027, and opened reservations on September 1, 2026. December 2026 is the last Christmas with the temple still wrapped, and — because everyone in the state knows that — it may be the last quiet one for a while.
This guide is written from Provo, for people who are driving or riding the train an hour north with children, grandparents, or a date, and who want to know what is actually there this year, when to go, how to get there and back, and what else to fold into the trip. The lights are the reason; Christkindlmarkt, the choir concert, the zoo lights, and the downtown ice rink are the rest of the evening. Dates and hours below are the published pattern as of early September 2026, and the church confirms the light schedule each November; nothing in this article should be read as a substitute for that announcement.
The Dates and the Hours
The Temple Square Christmas lights have followed one calendar for years: on the Friday after Thanksgiving, off after January 1. In 2025 that was November 28 through January 1, with the lights on daily from 4:30 to 10 p.m. and again from 6 to 8 a.m. for the commuters and the joggers. For 2026, Thanksgiving is November 26, so the lights should come on Friday, November 27, and run through Friday, January 1, 2027, on the same hours. The church posts the season's details on its newsroom site in mid-November; if the pattern changes, that is where it will show.
There is no lighting ceremony. The old tradition — a program in the Tabernacle followed by the moment the square went from dark to lit — ended with the renovation and the pandemic, and the church has not revived it. The lights simply come on at 4:30 on the first Friday, and the first night is one of the busiest of the season for exactly that reason.
The lights are off on no night of the season, including Christmas Day, which matters for anyone reading our what's open on Christmas Day guide and looking for something to do: the drive to Salt Lake to walk the square on the evening of the 25th is a real Utah Valley tradition, and the crowd that night is families who have exhausted the toys.
What the Square Looks Like This Winter
If you have not been since 2019, the geography has changed and it is worth knowing before you arrive with a stroller. The temple itself has been surrounded by construction for seven years, and the lights have never been on the building during the renovation; they are on the trees, the grounds, the fountains, and the plazas around it. Each December has reopened a little more of the square: the 2024 season brought back plazas that had been closed for years, and the 2025 season had most of the grounds open, with the temple visible above the fencing and, for the first time, the south-side cranes gone. By the spring of 2026 the scaffolding on the south tower was down and the art-glass windows were in. Photographs of the lit temple in December 2026 will show the finished exterior, which is a real change from the tarps and cranes in every family's 2021 photos.
Around the temple, the buildings that carry the season's displays are the ones that were never closed. The Tabernacle — home of the Tabernacle Choir — hosts the free organ recitals and some of the December performances. The Assembly Hall, the smaller Gothic building on the southwest corner, hosts concerts. The Conference Center across North Temple has held free nightly performances by school, missionary, and community choirs from the end of November through December 23, in various rooms and at various times, plus its own decorated displays during regular hours through the first week of January. The Church History Museum on West Temple has run a Victorian Christmas room, an international nativity display, and free take-home crafts for kids. The Giving Machines — vending machines where you buy a goat, a week of meals, or a vaccine for a charity — have been installed on the square and at the museum lobby through the season. The Church History Library and the FamilySearch Library stay open on normal hours without Christmas programming.
The international nativities, the reflecting pool, the tree-wrapped walkways along North Temple and Main Street, and the lit facades of the buildings around the square are the walk. Allow 45 minutes to an hour to see it properly with children, more if you go into the buildings, and expect to cover a mile or so on foot including the walk from the train or the garage.
The Train Versus the Drive
This is the question every Utah Valley family asks, and the answer depends on the size of your group and how late you want to stay.
FrontRunner. The commuter train from Provo Central Station (near the corner of 600 South and University Avenue) or Orem Central takes a little under an hour to Salt Lake Central, from which Temple Square is a 15-minute walk north up 400 West or a short ride on TRAX — the Green Line from Salt Lake Central or the Blue and Red Lines from the Arena stop — inside the downtown free-fare zone. Trains run roughly every half hour in the evening. The constraint is the last southbound train, which has usually left Salt Lake Central before 11 p.m. on weeknights and a little later on Fridays and Saturdays; a family that wants to see the lights come on at 4:30, eat downtown, and be back in Provo by 9 has no problem, and a couple who wants to stay until the lights go off at 10 should check the schedule twice. Fares for a family of four run less than the parking and gas, kids ride cheaply, and nobody has to drive the last stretch of I-15 in the dark with a car full of sleeping children. Our FrontRunner from Provo guide covers the stations, the parking at Provo Central, and the fare app. On Christmas Day, UTA has run no service at all; on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, reduced or special schedules; confirm before you plan around a train on any holiday.
Driving. Provo to Temple Square is 45 minutes to an hour on I-15 outside of the evening commute, and the commute is the problem: leaving Provo at 4 p.m. on a December weekday puts you into the northbound rush at Point of the Mountain and the downtown congestion at the same time as everyone else arriving for the lights. Leaving at 5:30 or later is better, and the lights are on until 10. Parking is the other cost. The City Creek Center garages, entered from West Temple or Main Street, are the closest and charge by the hour with validation from the mall's merchants; the Conference Center garage on North Temple is often the easiest to get into and out of; street parking is metered and scarce. Budget $5 to $15 for a garage and 15 minutes to get out of it after the lights go off on a Saturday. With a stroller, a group of eight, or a plan to combine the lights with the zoo or Christkindlmarkt, drive; the transit connections to Sunnyside Avenue are poor.
The Christmas Bus. Some ward groups and senior organizations in Utah Valley charter buses to the lights; if you are in one, that is the easiest version of the trip and the one with the most singing.
Christkindlmarkt: The Afternoon Half of the Evening
The German Christmas market at This Is The Place Heritage Park — the pioneer village at 2601 Sunnyside Avenue, at the mouth of Emigration Canyon on the east side of Salt Lake — has grown over fifteen years into one of the most-attended holiday events in the state. Christkindlmarkt SLC runs four days in early December: December 2 through 5 in 2026, a Wednesday through Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. each day. Admission is free. The market fills the park's main street with wooden booths selling ornaments, wooden toys, handmade goods, and the food — bratwurst, pretzels, Lebkuchen, roasted nuts, glühwein and its non-alcoholic cousin — that makes the whole thing smell the way it does. There are daily parades, a Christkind who appears at the main square after each parade for photos, choirs and dancers on a stage, and a charity project each year; the 2025 market collected towels for a housing nonprofit.
The practical problem is parking. The park's own lot fills within the first hour; the market runs free off-site lots with shuttles, and the smart move is to go directly to a shuttle lot rather than drive to the gate. The market has streamlined its entrance to a single point in recent years. Weekday afternoons are far quieter than Saturday, and the last two hours of the day — 6 to 8 — are the coldest and thinnest.
The Utah Valley plan that works: leave Provo mid-morning on one of the four market days, do Christkindlmarkt through the afternoon while it is light, drive the 15 minutes down Sunnyside and into downtown as the sun sets, park at the Conference Center, and walk Temple Square after the lights come on at 4:30. Dinner downtown, home by 9. It is a full day and the best single December day trip the county offers a family.
Hogle Zoo, a few hundred yards west on Sunnyside, runs ZooLights most nights in December; it is a separate ticket and a separate crowd, and it makes the same drive do double duty on nights the market is not running.
The Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert
The Christmas concert by the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square, with the Orchestra at Temple Square and a guest artist, has run for more than two decades over a weekend in mid-December in the 21,000-seat Conference Center, and it is the hardest ticket in Utah. Tickets are free and distributed by a random drawing on the choir's website that has typically opened in early October and closed a few weeks later, with winners notified in early November; the guest artist is announced around the time the drawing opens. Entering for one specific night rather than "any night," and for the smallest number of seats you can use, is widely believed to help.
If the drawing does not go your way: a standby line forms outside the Conference Center on concert nights, and some seats are released to it, but for a family driving from Provo it is a long gamble in the cold. The choir's regular Sunday-morning broadcast, Music & the Spoken Word, on the Sunday after the concert weekend is open to the public without tickets, is a shortened version of the same program, and is the reliable fallback. The concert is also broadcast on PBS the following December and sold as a recording, which is how most of the state has seen it.
The Crowd Calendar
Temple Square in December draws hundreds of thousands of visitors over the season, and the difference between a good night and a miserable one with small children is which night you pick.
The busiest nights, in roughly descending order: every Saturday; the Friday after Thanksgiving when the lights first come on; the nights of the choir concert weekend; every night between Christmas and New Year's, when the whole state is off work; and every Friday. The quietest nights: Monday through Wednesday in the first half of December, the first hour after the lights come on on a weeknight when the after-work crowd has not arrived, and any night with a storm bad enough to scare off the casual visitors, which in Salt Lake in December means several nights a season. The square is at its emptiest around 9 p.m. on a Tuesday, which is also when the temperature has dropped to the point that the children are done.
The temperature is the other constraint. Downtown Salt Lake in December sits under the same inversion as Provo, and the air at 6 p.m. is often in the 20s with a wind off the river bottoms; the square is exposed and the walk from the garage is exposed. Dress the children for an hour outside, bring the stroller blanket, and plan the hot chocolate stop for afterward rather than before.
The Rest of Downtown
The lights are 45 minutes to an hour of the evening; the rest is what makes the drive worthwhile.
City Creek Center, directly across South Temple and Main Street from the square, is a covered-and-open mall with the creek running through it, fountains that are lit for the season, and enough restaurants and a food court to feed any group. It closes at 9 on most nights and is closed on Sundays. The Gallivan Center ice rink, on 200 South, is the downtown outdoor rink; it is small, cheap, and the thing the kids remember. The Eccles Theater on Main Street usually has a holiday touring production in December. The Salt Palace occasionally hosts a holiday craft fair. And Abravanel Hall, where the Utah Symphony plays its Christmas program, is a block west.
The restaurants in walking distance of the square that take reservations fill on December weekends; the food court at City Creek does not. If you want a real dinner, book it. If you want to feed six children and leave, the food court and the pizza places on Main Street are fine. Our day trips from Provo guide has the broader downtown map for the daylight hours.
After 2027
The temple opens its doors for public tours on April 5, 2027, and the tours run seven days a week through October 1, as part of a celebration the church has described as unlike anything it has done. Salt Lake City has approved downtown street closures for the open house; the church has said new visitor experiences are coming to the square; and after the open house, the temple will be rededicated and returned to its ordinary use. By December 2027 the fencing will be gone, the grounds will be finished, the new plazas will be open, and the lights will be strung on and around a building most Utahns under 25 have never seen unwrapped.
That Christmas will draw the largest crowds in the history of the display, and the crowd calendar above will need to be rewritten. Which is the argument, if you need one, for going this year: the lights are the same, the market is the same, the choir is the same, and the square is as quiet as it is going to be for a long time. Our guide to the temples of Utah Valley covers what to expect at an open house, since the Provo City Center and Orem temples went through the same thing more recently; for the Salt Lake Temple, the church's reservation site is the only ticket.
The Short Version
Lights: Friday, November 27, 2026, through January 1, 2027, expected; 4:30 to 10 p.m. nightly, plus 6 to 8 a.m.; free; confirmed by the church each November. Christkindlmarkt: December 2 through 5, 2026, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., free, shuttle lots. Choir concert: mid-December, free tickets by drawing in October, Sunday broadcast as the fallback. Train: FrontRunner from Provo Central, under an hour, last southbound before 11 on weeknights, no service Christmas Day. Drive: 45 minutes to an hour outside the commute, $5 to $15 to park, leave after 5:30. Best nights: weekdays early in the month. Worst: Saturdays and the week after Christmas. Dress for 25 degrees. And go this year, because next year it will be different.
Related Guides
- What's Open on Christmas Day in Provo
- New Year's Eve in Utah Valley
- FrontRunner from Provo
- Day Trips from Provo
- Luminaria at Thanksgiving Point
- Christmas in Provo: Holiday Events & Lights Guide
- General Conference Weekend in Utah Valley
- Temple Visitor Guide for Utah Valley
Frequently Asked Questions
When do the Temple Square Christmas lights turn on in 2026?
Is it worth going while the Salt Lake Temple is still under renovation?
Should I drive or take FrontRunner from Provo?
What is Christkindlmarkt and when is it?
How do I get tickets to the Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert?
What nights are the least crowded?
What else is there to do downtown with kids in December?
What will be different at Christmas 2027?
