Dublin Winter Lights Switches On as City Glows with Christmas Decorations
Dublin’s Winter Lights 2025 festival officially switched on this December 1st, transforming the city centre with large-scale projections, interactive installations and augmented reality experiences across a mapped trail of locations designed to run through December.
The festival runs alongside the city’s wider Christmas lighting programme, which sees major shopping streets and public thoroughfares lit up for the season. The citywide switch on this year included a ceremony outside Penneys where two children helped illuminate decorations across Mary Street, Capel Street and Henry Street, signalling the start of the broader festive lighting across the centre. Dublin Town, the business collective responsible for many of the retail area displays, says the seasonal lights are installed across multiple streets each year as part of its long-running programme; this year’s installation work involved dozens of staff working through the nights to put up displays across the city centre.
Organisers mapped 25 city centre locations for Winter Lights 2025, with headline installations at Merrion Square Park and the GPO and new site activations at Dublin Castle, Meeting House Square and along the River Liffey. Several festival pieces are integrated with the city’s street decorations: for example, the trees on O’Connell Street are being transformed with colour-changing LED neon shapes as part of the Winter Lights programme, creating a visual link between the festival installations and the permanent seasonal displays along key routes.
Dublin City Council and festival curators say the combined programme aims to draw residents and visitors into the centre during the darker weeks, blending public art, community projects and retail lighting to create a continuous festive experience from shopping streets to cultural landmarks. Community elements include a children’s art competition whose winning works will be projected around the city and used on civic Christmas cards, while the GPO projection programme features shortlisted international and national artists with a winner to be announced during the festival.
Practical information
- Dates: Winter Lights installations run through December; city centre Christmas lights are already in place for the season.
- Locations: 25 festival sites across the city centre; retail and shopping streets lit across multiple thoroughfares, including Mary Street, Henry Street and Grafton Street areas.
- Ticketing: Merrion Square Park hosts a ticketed trail 2€ for an adult with 2 children free; most festival installations and the city’s street lights are free to view.
- Installation scale: The seasonal retail lighting programme is a substantial operation, requiring teams working overnight across many streets to erect displays each year.
Hashtags: #ChristmasLightsDublin 
