Marathon Sunday opens the month, Thanksgiving closes it, and the holiday season fills the stretch in between.
Last updated: 2026 | Originally published: November 1, 2025
November in New York moves fast. The TCS New York City Marathon takes over the five boroughs on November 1, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade turns 100 on the 26th, and the rinks, markets and light shows open somewhere in between. This guide covers 38 events in four groups: city traditions, skating, markets and holiday lights, stage, music and nightlife, and food, drink and cozy escapes. A weekend-by-weekend breakdown at the end helps sequence the month.
Table of Contents Show
City Traditions: Marathon, Parades & Tree Season
TCS New York City Marathon
📍 Location: All five boroughs, finishing in Central Park | 🌐 Website: TCS New York City Marathon | Date: Sunday, November 1, 2026
The marathon opens the month and marks 50 years on the five-borough course, which first ran in 1976. About 60,000 runners cross the city from Staten Island to Central Park, with roughly a million spectators along the route. The Bronx section between miles 20 and 21 is rerouted this year, the first change to the course since 2011.
First Avenue through the 60s to the 90s and Central Park South are the loudest places to watch. Pick a corner early.
Veterans Day Parade [America’s Parade]
📍 Location: 5th Avenue, Manhattan | 🌐 Website: Veterans Day Parade | Date: Wednesday, November 11, 2026
The country’s largest Veterans Day observance marches up Fifth Avenue with service members, marching bands, and floats. It is free to watch and falls on a Wednesday, so it fits into a lunch break. The United War Veterans Council posts the step-off time and route.
Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade
📍 Location: Central Park West to Herald Square | 🌐 Website: Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade | Date: Thursday, November 26, 2026 | Time: 8:30 AM
The parade turns 100 this year, with a record 100 inflatable elements joining the floats and marching bands on the route from Central Park West down to Herald Square. NBC carries it live for anyone who would rather watch from the couch.
On Wednesday, November 25, the balloons are inflated on the Upper West Side near the American Museum of Natural History, and the public can walk through. Macy’s posts the inflation hours.
Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree
📍 Location: Rockefeller Center, Midtown | 🌐 Website: Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree | Date: Arrives Saturday, November 7 [Lit Wednesday, December 2, 2026]
This year’s tree is a 76-foot Norway spruce from West Edmeston, New York. It arrives on Saturday, November 7, with a free Meet the Tree Day from 10 AM to 1 PM at Rockefeller Center, first come, first served.
The lighting ceremony is Wednesday, December 2, from 7 PM to 10 PM, and the tree stays lit through mid-January. The plaza and its rink are busy all month, so a weekday morning is the easier time to see it.
AMNH Origami Holiday Tree
📍 Location: American Museum of Natural History, 200 Central Park West — Upper West Side, Manhattan | 🌐 Website: AMNH Origami Holiday Tree | Date: Opens Monday, November 23, 2026
The museum’s annual tree is folded entirely from paper. The 2026 theme is animal athletes, with more than 1,000 models of cheetahs, hummingbirds and more. It is included with museum admission.
Canstruction
📍 Location: Brookfield Place, 230 Vesey Street — Battery Park City, Manhattan | 🌐 Website: Canstruction | Dates: Through Monday, November 9, 2026 | Time: 10 AM–7 PM
Teams of architects and engineers spend the fall building giant sculptures out of unopened cans, and the finished pieces are spread across the Brookfield Place complex for public viewing. When the show comes down, the cans go to City Harvest.
Guided tours run on November 4, 5 and 7 and require registration through Eventbrite. The exhibition closes at 6 PM on the last day.
Saks Fifth Avenue Holiday Light Show
📍 Location: 611 5th Avenue — Midtown, Manhattan | Date: Starts Monday, November 23, 2026 | Tickets: Free
Saks turns its Fifth Avenue facade into a choreographed light-and-music show that plays in the evening through the season, timed to the unveiling of its holiday windows. Watching from the sidewalk costs nothing, so expect a crowd. Saks posts the showtimes.
Skating, Markets & Holiday Lights
Bank of America Winter Village at Bryant Park
📍 Location: Bryant Park — Midtown, Manhattan | 🌐 Website: Bank of America Winter Village | Dates: Open from Wednesday, October 28; rink through Sunday, February 28, 2027 | Tickets: Free skating, skate rental extra
The Winter Village opened on October 28 with about 180 vendors in its glass-walled Holiday Shops, and it marks its 25th year in 2026. Browsing the shops is free, and so is the skating rink, with only skate rental costing extra.
November is the calmer stretch before the December rush, which makes it the easier window to get on the ice.
The Rink at Rockefeller Center
📍 Location: 600 5th Avenue — Midtown, Manhattan | 🌐 Website: The Rink at Rockefeller Center | Date: Open for the season | Tickets: General Skate from $22 | VIP Skate from $131
Skating beneath the tree is the postcard version of a New York winter, and the rink runs on timed tickets all month. Sessions sell out, especially on weekends, so book ahead.
Wollman Rink
📍 Location: Central Park, 830 5th Avenue [near 63rd Street] — Manhattan | 🌐 Website: Wollman Rink | Dates: Wednesday, October 28 through Tuesday, March 16, 2027
Wollman puts a Central Park backdrop behind the ice instead of Midtown’s towers. Skate rentals, lessons, and 2026–27 season passes are available, and tickets are on sale now. Weekend sessions fill up, so book a timed slot.
Lightscape at Brooklyn Botanic Garden
📍 Location: Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 990 Washington Avenue — Prospect Heights, Brooklyn | 🌐 Website: Lightscape at Brooklyn Botanic Garden | Dates: Friday, November 20, 2026 through Sunday, January 3, 2027 | Tickets: Adults $29–$44
The Garden’s after-dark winter trail returns November 20 with a reworked route built around its four seasons. Monumental light sculptures, color across trees and water, and site-specific music line the path, and the Lightscape Bar pours cocktails and hot chocolate along the way.
Adult tickets run from $29 on Value Nights to $44 at peak. The Garden closes to daytime visitors at 3:30 PM, so only ticket holders are inside after dark, and the Value Nights are the cheapest and least crowded.
Bronx Zoo Holiday Lights
📍 Location: Bronx Zoo, 2300 Southern Boulevard — Bronx | 🌐 Website: Bronx Zoo Holiday Lights | Dates: Saturday, November 21, 2026 through Sunday, January 3, 2027 [select dates]
Holiday Lights runs on select dates rather than every night. In November that means November 21–22 and 27–29. Six lantern trails carry more than 400 animal lanterns across Africa, Asia, the oceans and a Forest of Color, and there are walk-through light tunnels and a music-synced holiday tree.
The lights come on at 4:30 PM, and tickets include park entry from 1 PM, so you can see the animals first. New this year, the Children’s Zoo Farmyard, World of Darkness and World of Reptiles stay open after dark. Tickets are timed and must be reserved in advance, and it runs rain or shine.
Holiday Train Show
📍 Location: New York Botanical Garden, 2900 Southern Boulevard — Bronx | 🌐 Website: Holiday Train Show | Date: Saturday, November 14, 2026 through Sunday, January 10, 2027
For more than 30 years, the Botanical Garden’s Holiday Train Show has sent model trains past nearly 200 landmark replicas, from bridges and brownstones to the Statue of Liberty, under the glass of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.
Every miniature is built from plant parts such as palm fronds, pinecones and cinnamon sticks, with new additions each year and an outdoor trainscape as well. It is a trip to the Bronx that works well with kids.
Gingerbread NYC: The Great Borough Bake-Off 2026
📍 Location: Museum of the City of New York, 1220 5th Avenue — East Harlem, Manhattan | 🌐 Website: Gingerbread NYC | Date: Opens Friday, November 6, 2026
Now in its fifth year, Gingerbread NYC gathers bakers from all five boroughs to rebuild the city’s landmarks in gingerbread. This year’s theme is Iconic New York, and the display includes edible skyscrapers, candy-lined streets, and a miniature cityscape.
A panel of judges hands out themed prizes, and visitors vote through the run for the People’s Choice winner. The museum is open daily, so it pairs easily with other stops uptown.
Urbanspace Holiday Markets
📍 Location: Union Square, Columbus Circle, Herald Square & Macy’s Holiday Square — Manhattan | 🌐 Website: Urbanspace Holiday Markets
Urbanspace runs the city’s best-known holiday markets, open-air villages of local makers, gifts, and food across four Manhattan locations. Union Square is the flagship, and the Macy’s Holiday Square location added a beer hall last year. Urbanspace posts opening dates for each market on its site.
Grand Central Holiday Fair
📍 Location: Grand Central Terminal, 89 East 42nd Street — Midtown East, Manhattan | 🌐 Website: Grand Central Holiday Fair | Dates: Monday, November 9 through Thursday, December 24, 2026
The city’s oldest indoor holiday market fills Vanderbilt Hall with independent makers. It is open Monday through Saturday from 10 AM to 7 PM and Sunday from 11 AM to 6 PM, and it is closed on Thanksgiving. It is a warm stop on a cold day.
Candy Cane Concierge at New York Marriott Marquis
📍 Location: New York Marriott Marquis, 1535 Broadway — Theater District, Manhattan | 🌐 Website: Candy Cane Concierge | Dates: Thursday, November 26 through Thursday, December 24, 2026 | Time: 4 PM–7 PM | Tickets: Free
From Thanksgiving through Christmas Eve, the Marriott Marquis stations a Candy Cane Concierge in its lobby every afternoon, handing out free gourmet candy canes. This year’s rotating flavor is apple pie à la mode.
It is a small, free piece of holiday theater, and the Times Square location makes it a five-minute stop before a Broadway matinee or on the walk to the tree.
Stage, Music & Nightlife
Radio City Christmas Spectacular
📍 Location: Radio City Music Hall, 1260 6th Avenue — Theater District, Manhattan | 🌐 Website: Radio City Christmas Spectacular | Dates: Wednesday, November 4, 2026 through Monday, January 4, 2027
The Rockettes return for 230 performances, the longest run in the production’s history, with a new scene bringing the show to 10 numbers. It opens the first week of November, so it is not a December-only outing.
New York City Ballet: George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker
📍 Location: David H. Koch Theater, 20 Lincoln Center Plaza — Upper West Side, Manhattan | 🌐 Website: New York City Ballet: George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker | Dates: Friday, November 27, 2026 through Sunday, January 3, 2027
The Nutcracker opens the Friday after Thanksgiving with more than 90 dancers and the one-ton Christmas tree that grows on stage. Opening weekend sells out early, so book ahead.
Santa’s Secret NYC 2026
📍 Location: Santa’s Secret Showroom, 62 Thomas Street — Tribeca, Manhattan | Ticket: Fever | Dates: Friday, November 27 through Wednesday, December 30, 2026
An adults-only holiday show. You walk through eight immersive winter installations, then settle into the showroom for cocktails, dinner, a live band and a variety show of aerial acts, ballet, burlesque, vocals and comedy.
It bills itself as a seductive winter wonderland, which sets the right expectation. This is a grown-up night out, not a family outing.
Teksupport: Circoloco Halloween
📍 Location: Brooklyn Storehouse, Building 293, Assembly Road — Brooklyn Navy Yard, Brooklyn | Ticket: DICE | Date: Sunday, November 1, 2026 | Time: 12 PM–12 AM
Teksupport brings Circoloco, the Ibiza house and techno institution, to the Brooklyn Storehouse for a Halloween-weekend session. This is Night 3 of the run, a 12-hour day-to-night set with Bedouin, Dixon, Chloé Caillet, Jimi Jules, Prospa, Dean Turnley, Miguelle & Tons and Rossi trading the decks from noon to midnight.
It is 21 and over.
Drunk Dracula NYC
📍 Location: The Ruby Theatre, 35 West 39th Street — Midtown West, Manhattan | Ticket: Fever | Dates: Through Friday, November 6, 2026
From the team behind Drunk Shakespeare, this is a seated, immersive retelling of Dracula in which an actor takes five shots of whiskey and tries to finish the story anyway, while craft cocktails are delivered to your seat. Expect fog, strobes, and loud noises.
It runs only into the first week of November, so catch it then or wait until next year.
Madame Morbid’s Trolley Tours
📍 Location: 510 Driggs Avenue & North 9th Street — Williamsburg, Brooklyn | 🌐 Website: Madame Morbid’s Trolley Tours | Dates: Through Sunday, November 15, 2026
A host narrates Brooklyn’s grimmest lore from a Victorian-style trolley rolling through the borough’s oldest neighborhoods: the house where an 1864 séance went wrong, the site of a theater fire, a canal with alarming lab results and a headless ghost said to walk the Brooklyn Bridge. The tone is macabre and playful more than scary.
Diwali Festival: The Indian Wedding
📍 Location: Flushing Town Hall, 137-35 Northern Boulevard — Flushing, Queens | 🌐 Website: Diwali Festival: The Indian Wedding | Date: Sunday, November 1, 2026 | Time: 12 PM–4 PM
Flushing Town Hall marks Diwali with an afternoon in two halves: hands-on workshops in Indian food, art and movement, followed by a staged wedding dance-drama from Abha B. Roy and the Srijan Dance Company.
The performance follows real customs, including henna for the bride, the turmeric haldi, regional dances, the ceremony and the bride’s farewell, and it draws the audience in as guests, with a tassa drumming procession to welcome the bridal party.
Brian Newman: Songs for Lonely Lovers Vinyl Release Party
📍 Location: Joanne Trattoria, 70 West 68th Street — Upper West Side, Manhattan | 🌐 Website: Joanne Trattoria | Date: Friday, November 6, 2026 | Time: Dinner seatings from 6 PM, show at 8:30 PM
Jazz trumpeter and bandleader Brian Newman celebrates the vinyl release of Songs for Lonely Lovers with a night at Joanne Trattoria. Newman is a longtime friend and collaborator of Lady Gaga on Cheek to Cheek, Love for Sale and Harlequin, going back to their Lower East Side days before she was famous.
Dinner comes off a menu built from Newman’s and guest performer Angie Pontani’s family recipes, with drinks and live music. Space is limited and it is one night only, so reserve ahead.
The Pocket Jazz Club at The Muse New York
📍 Location: 130 West 46th Street — Midtown West, Manhattan | 🌐 Website: All That Jazz
The Pocket is a live jazz club inside The Muse hotel, modeled on the 52nd Street rooms and co-founded by alumni of Jazz Standard, the Blue Note, and Jazz at Lincoln Center. Wynton Marsalis is among the names it has already drawn.
A prix-fixe dinner comes with your choice of the 7 PM or 9 PM live set, so dinner and the show share one room. The hotel’s All That Jazz package, from $447, bundles 15% off a stay with a three-course dinner for two at The Pocket, tax and gratuity included and beverages extra.
Sunday Salon: Bronx Legends of Jazz Piano, Valerie Capers & Bertha Hope
📍 Location: Bronx Music Hall, 438 East 163rd Street — Bronx | 🌐 Website: Bronx Music Hall | Date: Sunday, November 8, 2026 | Time: 3 PM
Bronx Music Hall honors two Bronx jazz-piano figures who are both Mellon Jazz Fellows: Valerie Capers, a composer, educator and the first blind graduate of Juilliard, and Bertha Hope, a pianist and composer who has shaped generations of younger players. Presented with the Jazz Foundation of America, the afternoon doubles as a birthday celebration for Hope.
The Arena: A Radio Play
📍 Location: Bronx Music Hall, 438 East 163rd Street — Bronx | 🌐 Website: Bronx Music Hall | Date: Friday, November 13, 2026 | Time: 7:30 PM | Tickets: $25
Infinite Variety Productions stages a documentary radio play drawn from the memoir of Hallie Flanagan, who ran the Federal Theatre Project, the New Deal program that employed artists and carried live theater across Depression-era America.
The frame is the dream of an out-of-work composer who finds Flanagan’s memoir, and vaudeville-style sketches restage the congressional hearing that ended the project.
New York Son Jarocho Festival [16th Edition]
📍 Location: Bronx Music Hall, 438 East 163rd Street — Bronx | 🌐 Website: Bronx Music Hall | Date: Saturday, November 14, 2026 | Time: Doors 12:30 PM, music 1 PM–8 PM | Tickets: $20
The New York Son Jarocho Festival reaches the Bronx for the first time in its 16th year, celebrating the traditional music of Veracruz, Mexico. Bands and collectives from across the East Coast play through the afternoon and evening.
The day closes with a community fandango, the participatory circle of music and dance that anyone can join.
Food, Drink & Cozy Escapes
NY Cider Festival
📍 Location: Red Hook Cidery, 185 Van Dyke Street — Red Hook, Brooklyn | Ticket: Eventbrite | Date: Saturday, November 14, 2026 | Time: 11 AM–4 PM
The New York Cider Association’s annual tasting brings pours from cideries across the state to Red Hook, with live music, food, and an optional local-bites pairing add-on. It is an all-afternoon Brooklyn session for anyone who would rather drink apples than grapes, and the waterfront cidery replaces last year’s indoor room. Tickets are through Eventbrite.
OREO x Harlem Shake: Harlem After Dark Milkshake
📍 Location: 100 West 124th Street — Harlem, Manhattan & 119 5th Avenue — Park Slope, Brooklyn | 🌐 Website: Harlem Shake | Dates: Through Sunday, November 15, 2026 | Price: $12
Harlem Shake is running a limited OREO collaboration, Harlem After Dark, a spin on its best-selling Harlem Shake milkshake. It blends organic vanilla ice cream and red velvet cake from a local Harlem baker with OREO pieces, stripes the glass with house chocolate and tops it with whipped cream, cookie crunch and red velvet crumble.
The Lost Boys Prix-Fixe at Highball
📍 Location: Highball at Tempo by Hilton New York Times Square, 1568 Broadway — Theater District, Manhattan | 🌐 Website: Tempo by Hilton New York Times Square | Dates: Through Tuesday, September 14, 2027
Highball, the cocktail lounge inside Tempo by Hilton Times Square, serves a three-course menu themed to the Broadway musical The Lost Boys. Starters are arancini or spicy tuna, mains are pasta, chicken or salmon, and dessert is rice pudding with gummy worms and caramel popcorn, served in a Chinese-takeout box with edible chopsticks, a nod to a scene in the show.
The signature cocktail, the Carnival of the Damned, is finished with cotton candy that dissolves into a fake-blood effect.
Unfiltered with Amy Racine & Yannick Benjamin: Brunch Edition
📍 Location: The Terrace and Outdoor Gardens, 701 7th Avenue — Midtown West, Manhattan | Reservation: OpenTable | Date: Sunday, November 15, 2026 | Time: 11:15 AM–2:30 PM
Amy Racine, a 2026 James Beard semifinalist and beverage director of JF Restaurants, brings a brunch edition of her monthly Unfiltered wine series, which just marked its first year. November’s guest is Yannick Benjamin, director of wine at the University Club, co-owner of Beaupierre Wines & Spirits, and founder of Wine on Wheels, the nonprofit he started after a 2003 accident left him paralyzed, to push accessibility and inclusion in wine and hospitality. A portion of the proceeds goes to that cause.
Amy’s wine selections are paired with an à la carte brunch that includes truffled eggs Benedict, lobster quiche and steak and eggs.
Leuca: New Weekly Specials
📍 Location: The William Vale, 111 North 12th Street — Williamsburg, Brooklyn | 🌐 Website: Leuca
Andrew Carmellini’s Southern Italian restaurant in the William Vale has set a night-by-night lineup: a three-course prix fixe on Sundays, a $10 industry happy hour on Mondays, buy-one-get-one wood-fired pizza on Tuesdays, free corkage on Wednesdays, rotating chef’s specials Thursday through Saturday, and live music by the bar on weekend nights.
Baba Cool
📍 Location: 33 Lafayette Avenue — Fort Greene, Brooklyn | 🌐 Website: Baba Cool
Baba Cool started in 2014 as a tiny Fort Greene cafe and has grown into a restaurant and garden of nearly 2,000 square feet. The cooking is vegetable-forward and globally minded, with crispy oyster mushrooms in chipotle aioli and a pulled spiced-chicken sandwich with ginger, plantain, and cayenne aioli, alongside cocktails like the tallow-washed-bourbon What’s Beef? and the mezcal-and-carrot Ground Control.
Chef Gabriella Mann’s fall additions are head-on shrimp with guajillo and pepita, brothy butter beans with bone broth and crusty bread, and a pumpkin olive oil cake with caramel cardamom.
BABA on Withers
📍 Location: 47 Withers Street — Williamsburg, Brooklyn | 🌐 Website: BABA on Withers
Mann’s Williamsburg follow-up is a natural wine bar and restaurant that draws on Marseille, where her grandmother is from, for a Mediterranean, North African and French menu. Crispy eggplant with harissa and sunflower-seed purée and a lamb burger with housemade pickles anchor the list, alongside a discovery-driven wine list and a cocktail program.
The fall additions are bar salmon with cauliflower purée and grenobloise, sailor-style mussels with leeks and crème fraîche, and a squash shakshuka with butternut, feta and dukkah. Warming drinks include the Hug in a Mug, spiced rum and hot cider, and the Ol’ Bacon, bacon-washed bourbon and maple.
New Taste of Fall at The Skylark
📍 Location: 200 West 39th Street, 30th Floor — Midtown, Manhattan | 🌐 Website: The Skylark
The Skylark’s fall menu suits its setting, a cocktail lounge 30 floors above Midtown, with shareable plates and seasonal drinks. The burrata bites get an autumn version with upstate burrata on sourdough, delicata squash, brown-butter maple and sage, $18. An oxtail tart with charred leeks and puff pastry is $24, and the lobster crispy rice with spiced crème, lady apple and fennel is $22.
On the drinks side, the Pearfect Spritz with lemongrass, pear, cinnamon and prosecco is $22, and a non-alcoholic pear-and-elderflower spritz is $16.
Hotel Seville NoMad: Gilded Getaway Package
📍 Location: 22 East 29th Street — NoMad, Manhattan | 🌐 Website: Hotel Seville NoMad
The Gilded Getaway is a couples’ package at the Hotel Seville NoMad: a penthouse night, a chauffeured vintage-car tour of Midtown, cocktails at the hotel’s Il Bar, a $300 credit at Marc Forgione’s American Cut steakhouse, and a custom fragrance-making session with APOTHEKE.
The hotel is a 1906 Beaux-Arts building, and the package is pitched as an old-New-York romantic splurge.
November 2026: The Weekend-by-Weekend Breakdown
If you want help sequencing the month, here is how November reads when you stack the weekends in order. Winter Village, both Central Park and Rockefeller Center rinks, and the holiday markets are open throughout and are left out of the day-by-day lists.
Opening Weekend: Marathon Sunday [October 30 – November 1]
- Friday, October 30: Canstruction opens at Brookfield Place [through November 9]
- Sunday, November 1: The TCS New York City Marathon runs through all five boroughs, Circoloco takes over the Brooklyn Storehouse [12 PM–12 AM], and Flushing Town Hall holds its Diwali Festival [12 PM–4 PM]
The Read: Marathon Sunday sets the tone for the month. Watch from First Avenue or Central Park South, then choose between a Diwali afternoon in Flushing and the 12-hour Circoloco session in Brooklyn.
The Season Starts [November 4–8]
- Wednesday, November 4: Radio City Christmas Spectacular opens [through January 4]
- Friday, November 6: Gingerbread NYC opens at the Museum of the City of New York, and Brian Newman celebrates his vinyl release at Joanne Trattoria [show at 8:30 PM], and Drunk Dracula plays its last night
- Saturday, November 7: The Rockefeller Center tree arrives, with Meet the Tree Day from 10 AM to 1 PM
- Sunday, November 8: Sunday Salon with Valerie Capers and Bertha Hope at Bronx Music Hall [3 PM, free]
The Read: The holiday calendar starts opening up. Radio City, Gingerbread NYC and the tree’s arrival all land within four days, and Saturday can cover the tree in the morning and the gingerbread skyline uptown after.
Parade Week and Cider Day [November 9–15]
- Monday, November 9: Grand Central Holiday Fair opens, and Canstruction closes at 6 PM
- Wednesday, November 11: Veterans Day Parade on Fifth Avenue
- Friday, November 13: The Arena: A Radio Play at Bronx Music Hall [7:30 PM, $25]
- Saturday, November 14: NY Cider Festival at Red Hook Cidery, the Son Jarocho Festival at Bronx Music Hall [1 PM–8 PM, $20], and the Holiday Train Show opens at the New York Botanical Garden
- Sunday, November 15: Unfiltered brunch with Yannick Benjamin [11:15 AM–2:30 PM]; Madame Morbid’s trolley tours and the OREO x Harlem Shake milkshake both end
The Read: The Bronx does a lot of the work this weekend, with a radio play, a Son Jarocho festival and the Holiday Train Show within two days. Brooklyn gets the cider.
The Lights Come On [November 20–22]
- Friday, November 20: Lightscape opens at Brooklyn Botanic Garden [through January 3]
- Saturday–Sunday, November 21–22: Bronx Zoo Holiday Lights opens on its first select dates
The Read: A lighter calendar, which leaves room for the two big light shows. Both sell timed tickets, so book by date.
Thanksgiving Week [November 23–29]
- Monday, November 23: The Saks light show begins, and the AMNH Origami Holiday Tree opens
- Wednesday, November 25: Balloon inflation on the Upper West Side
- Thursday, November 26: Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade [8:30 AM], and the Candy Cane Concierge starts at the Marriott Marquis [4 PM–7 PM]
- Friday, November 27: The Nutcracker opens at the David H. Koch Theater, Santa’s Secret opens in Tribeca, and Bronx Zoo Holiday Lights runs November 27–29
The Read: Thanksgiving morning belongs to the parade, and the Friday after belongs to the Nutcracker and the first full holiday weekend.
Your November, Your Way
However the month goes for you, whether that is a parade-morning plan or a month of skating, November rewards booking early for the ticketed shows and saving the free events for the days in between. Pick the one or two big nights first, then fill the rest with the tree, the windows and the Winter Village.
THE DETAILS
38 events across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, grouped into city traditions, skating, markets and holiday lights, stage and nightlife, and food and drink. Dates run from Marathon Sunday on November 1 through the Friday after Thanksgiving, and many of the holiday events continue into January.
BKLS NOTE
Pick one ticketed night to book first, whether that is Lightscape, Radio City or the Bronx Zoo, and build the free events around it: the tree, the windows, the Winter Village and the parades.
