The Washington issue
Washington DC Holidays 2026: National Christmas Tree, Museums and Free Things
What is on in Washington this holiday season, when it opens, what it costs and which parts you have to book before you travel.
By Noa BergströmThe District, one neighbourhood at a time
On the Ellipse the National Christmas Tree stands on open lawn with the floodlit south face of the White House directly behind it, ringed by more than 50 small decorated state and territory trees. The lights come on near sunset and the display costs nothing. The 3 December lighting ceremony ran as a recreation.gov ticket lottery, and that lottery closed on 4 November 2026.
The Ellipse, F Street and the Botanic Garden
The National Christmas Tree & America Celebrates (President's Park, The Ellipse) is open to the public from 7 December 2026 to 1 January 2027. Nothing is ticketed, the lawn is open air, and you can walk up at dusk. Most people's photograph of Christmas in Washington is taken from this lawn.
DowntownDC Holiday Market (F Street NW, next to Gallery Place Metro) closes F Street with a double row of red-and-white striped wooden stall canopies under strung bulbs. Behind them rises the grey neoclassical colonnade of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery. This is the market's 22nd year and it runs from 13 November to 23 December 2026. Entry is free, craft stalls run $20 to $60 and street food is $8 to $15. The stallholders are local makers. The aisles between canopies are tight, so a large group will end up shopping in twos and threes. If you arrive in the city without a plan, start here.
Season's Greenings: National Parks and Historic Places (United States Botanic Garden, beside the Capitol) runs from 26 November 2026 to 3 January 2027, free and unticketed, with late openings to 8 p.m. on selected evenings. The 2026 edition takes the national parks as its theme for the US 250th. Model trains loop past scale replicas of the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol dome, built entirely from bark, moss and seed pods, inside a humid Victorian iron-and-glass conservatory banked in thousands of red poinsettias. Come on a weekday morning, because holidays and weekends jam the glasshouse. It is the best free indoor warm-up on the Mall.
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Ticketed light shows
ZooLights at Smithsonian's National Zoo runs from 20 November 2026 to 3 January 2027. Illuminated silk lanterns of whales, elephants and polar bears line the steep wooded Olmsted Walk, and tunnels of cool-white bulbs run over the hill paths. Entry is timed and capacity-capped, and nights do sell out. General admission is $10, the adults-only night is $19 and advance parking is $30. On a normal ZooLights night the outdoor animals are asleep and off view, so treat this as a walk through lights rather than a zoo visit unless you pay for the adults-only night.
Enchant Christmas (Nationals Park) is a four-million-bulb walkable light maze laid across a Major League baseball outfield, with the stadium tiers dark above it, a light-up dance floor and a market of wooden chalets on the concourse. It runs from 20 November to 27 December 2026 and the maze has a new storyline this year. Entry starts at $28, peak dates cost more and skating is a paid add-on. Weekends and the week before Christmas sell out, so book before you travel. Parties of 10 or more get discounted pricing, up to 25 people can be booked online, and anything larger goes through the sales team.
Holiday Reflections at Union Station fills the Beaux-Arts barrel-vaulted Grand Plaza with tall light columns, dozens of decorated trees and walk-in igloos, and adds a model railway hall with 800 feet of track and 18 trains running. It runs from 20 November 2026 to 4 January 2027 and closes on 26 November and 25 December. Tickets are $10 Monday to Thursday and $12 Friday to Sunday, plus a 10% preservation fee, with add-ons at $5 to $6. Timed tickets sell at the door and online, and last entry is an hour before close. All of it is indoors, with three Metro lines and Amtrak at the door, so keep it for a wet or freezing day.
ICE! featuring How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Gaylord National Resort, National Harbor, Maryland) chills a hall to 9°F (-13°C) and fills it with hand-carved coloured ice sculptures of Grinch scenes and two-storey ice slides. Visitors wear issued blue hooded parkas. Outside the hall, a 19-storey glass atrium holds a tree over an indoor river. It runs from 14 November 2026 to 3 January 2027 on timed-entry advance tickets from $41, and bundles with other resort activities save up to 30%. You reach it by car or water taxi, 20 minutes outside the District. No Metro stop serves it, and the trip is still worth making.
Two outdoor ice rinks
Sculpture Garden Ice Rink (National Gallery of Art, National Mall) puts 9,500 square feet of ice in the Sculpture Garden's circular granite fountain basin, so skaters circle between bare plane trees and large modern sculptures, with the glass pavilion café on one side. It opens on 23 November 2026 and runs to 7 March 2027, weather permitting. Admission is $15 adult and $12 concessions, skate hire is $7 and a season pass is $265. The fee buys two back-to-back 45-minute sessions. Sessions are first-come at the kiosk, so arrive early on a weekday. An hour of skating in the garden of a free national art museum is the best value in central Washington.
The Washington Harbour Ice Rink (Georgetown waterfront) is the District's largest outdoor rink, set in a curved waterfront plaza of tall fountain jets on the Potomac, with restaurant terraces and heat lamps ringing it and Key Bridge and the Kennedy Center in view. It runs from 19 November 2026 to 28 February 2027, weather permitting. Skating is $12 adult and $10 for children, seniors and military, with skates at $8. Parties of 10 or more pay $15 a head with skates included, booked with the rink directly. Pair it with a Georgetown dinner. Georgetown GLOW, the light-art festival that used to run here, is on hiatus.
Ballet, Dickens and carols
The Washington Ballet's The Nutcracker (Warner Theatre, a block from Metro Center) moves the whole ballet into American and Washington imagery. Septime Webre's staging casts George Washington as the Nutcracker and King George III as the Rat King, against Georgetown-townhouse drops, inside the gilded 1924 Warner Theatre with its ornate plaster boxes. It runs from 28 November to 27 December 2026 and seats are $64 to $222. Choose it over a generic Nutcracker if you want the city itself in the staging. The theatre handles orders of 15 or more tickets on 202.783.4000, and those tickets all have to be collected at Will Call.
A Christmas Carol at Ford's Theatre (10th Street) plays from 19 November to 31 December 2026, with Craig Wallace back as Scrooge and seats at $25 to $117. The playhouse has a period horseshoe balcony, and the flag-and-bunting-draped presidential box above stage left, the box where Lincoln was shot, is hung with Victorian garlands for Scrooge's London. Sensory-friendly, audio-described and ASL-interpreted dates are scheduled, and school bookings go through the box office on 888.616.0270. One ticket covers the play and a working historic monument.
Washington National Cathedral sings Handel's Messiah on 4 to 6 December 2026, with a 60-minute family Highlights on 5 December. The Cathedral Choral Society's Joy of Christmas follows on 12 and 13 December, and Cantus performs Lessons and Carols on 20 December. Concert seating is reserved and typically $25 to $95, with a livestream for anyone who misses out. Worship is never charged, apart from an optional $7 processing fee, and the big Christmas services need free reserved passes, released on 16 November 2026. Go for the acoustic. The nave is 20th-century English-Gothic in pale limestone with flying buttresses and a rose window, candle-lit for carols with a choir and baroque orchestra at the crossing.
Two parades on 5 December
Holiday Boat Parade & Party (The Wharf, Washington Channel) reaches its 34th edition on 5 December 2026. Activities start at 5 p.m., more than 60 boats under coloured light rigs motor down the narrow channel at 7 p.m., and fireworks close it at 8 p.m. A 45-foot nautical-themed Christmas tree stands on District Pier, with fire pits and heated drink gardens along the boardwalk and drinks at $10 to $18. Watching from the public promenade is free, but the paid viewing parties and the waterfront restaurants need reservations weeks out. The channel is exposed and this is the coldest hour of the holiday calendar, so dress for wind off the water.
Alexandria Scottish Christmas Walk Parade (King Street, Old Town) holds its 55th annual edition on Saturday 5 December 2026, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. More than 100 kilted pipe bands and clan tartans march down cobbled, brick-fronted King Street past red-brick 18th-century townhouses and wreathed sash windows, Scottish terriers in coats among them. Kerbside viewing is free along the whole route. The same day brings a Holiday Boat Parade of Lights down there, with dockside festivities from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. and the lit boats on the Potomac at 5:30 p.m. Old Town is 20 minutes from central Washington on the Metro Blue or Yellow line. Take the pipe bands in the morning and the Washington Channel in the evening.
Mount Vernon by candlelight
Christmas at George Washington's Mount Vernon lights the red-roofed white mansion above the Potomac with candle lanterns, puts costumed interpreters on the colonnaded piazza and keeps Aladdin the camel in a paddock by the courtyard. Mount Vernon by Candlelight runs on 27 and 28 November and on 11, 12, 18, 21 and 22 December 2026, from $41. Christmas Illuminations adds fireworks over the river on 19 and 20 December. Standard day admission is $28 adult and $14 child. The candlelight and Illuminations evenings are limited-capacity timed tickets and have to be pre-booked. The camel is not a gimmick: a camel was a real 1787 Washington household expense. The mansion has just reopened after a $40m restoration.
What to book and when
Book ZooLights, Enchant, the Grinch hall at National Harbor and the Mount Vernon evenings before you travel, because each one is timed-entry and capacity-capped. Holiday Reflections closes on 26 November and 25 December, both ice rinks run only in workable weather, and the cathedral's free service passes go out on 16 November 2026.
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Before you go
Is it free to see the National Christmas Tree in 2026?
Yes. The display on the Ellipse is free and open-air, with no ticket needed. It runs from 7 December 2026 to 1 January 2027 and the lights come on near sunset. The 3 December lighting ceremony was the exception: it needed a ticket, and that recreation.gov lottery closed on 4 November 2026.
What can I do for free in Washington at Christmas?
The National Christmas Tree display, the DowntownDC Holiday Market on F Street NW and Season's Greenings at the United States Botanic Garden are all free and unticketed. The Holiday Boat Parade at The Wharf costs nothing to watch from the public promenade, and the Alexandria Scottish Christmas Walk Parade nothing from the kerb on King Street. Cathedral worship is never charged, though the big Christmas services need a free reserved pass.
Do I need to book ZooLights in advance?
Yes. ZooLights runs on timed entry with a capacity cap, and nights sell out. General entry is $10, the adults-only night is $19 and advance parking is $30. On normal nights the outdoor animals are asleep and off view, so come for the lights.
Which Washington ice rink is better value?
The Sculpture Garden Ice Rink sits inside the National Gallery of Art's garden, where $15 adult ($12 concessions, skates $7) buys two 45-minute sessions back to back. The Washington Harbour Ice Rink in Georgetown is $12 adult, skates $8, and parties of 10 or more pay $15 a head with skates included if you book with the rink directly.
How do I get to ICE! at National Harbor from central Washington?
It is at the Gaylord National Resort in Maryland, about 20 minutes outside the District by car or water taxi. No Metro stop serves it. Tickets are timed and sold in advance from $41, and bundles with other resort activities save up to 30%.
