Croydon Christmas Lights: No Town Switch-On Since 2017

If you are searching for the date of Croydon’s Christmas lights switch-on, the honest answer is that the town centre does not hold one. It has not held a public switch-on ceremony since 2017. The lights go up, and then one evening they are simply on.

That is not a gap in the reporting. It is what the two organisations involved publish. Croydon BID funds and installs the town centre lights and has never announced a switch-on event in any of its Christmas material since the scheme began. Croydon Council last hosted one on Thursday 16 November 2017, a “Festive Lights Street Feast” of around 20 street food stalls from noon until 7.30pm, with the MonoTones and McGoozer playing between 5pm and 7pm, described in the council’s own announcement as “a precursor to the town centre’s Christmas lights being turned on”. It fed into Festive Fantasia, six commissioned animations projected up to 120 feet high onto three sites on North End and High Street, premiered on 18 November and then screened daily from 4.30pm to 9.30pm until 23 December 2017. (Croydon Council newsroom, 2017)

The switch-ons that do still happen in this borough are in the district centres, and they are run by residents’ associations, Rotary branches, business improvement districts and one local charity. None of them has announced a 2026 date yet. Below is what each one did last time, so you know roughly when to expect it and who to watch.

What goes up in the town centre

Croydon BID has funded the town centre lights for 18 years. Its 2025 scheme, the most recent it has published in detail:

• 71 decorations and lighting motifs across the town centre
• Ten streets, including North End, High Street, Surrey Street, Church Street, Katharine Street, Lansdowne Road, George Street East, George Street West and Crown Hill
• Up to 110,000 LED lights, including about 1,500 metres of tree lights
• On North End: the town centre Christmas tree, two interactive selfie installations, and lighting gobos projecting seasonal motifs onto buildings

The BID says the lights stay in place for seven weeks and deliver over 6,000 hours of additional illumination. (Croydon BID, 1 November 2025 and its winter lights page)

Seven weeks from a mid-November install takes the lights to the first week of January. The BID does not publish the switch date or the take-down date, and the 2025 announcement landed on 1 November, which is the realistic window for a 2026 announcement too.

The vote that decides who pays from 2027

This is the part nobody else is covering, and it is on the BID’s own website.

Croydon BID goes to ballot from 21 September to 21 October 2026 on a business proposal covering 2027 to 2032, at a proposed levy of 1.3% of rateable value. The published key dates are: notice of ballot issued 7 September 2026, ballot papers distributed 16 September, ballot opens 21 September, ballot closes at 5pm on 21 October 2026. (Croydon BID, Ballot 2026)

This winter’s lights are inside the current BID term and are not affected. What the ballot decides is whether there is a Croydon BID after it, and therefore who funds the 71 decorations and the North End tree from Christmas 2027 onwards. The result lands on 21 October, eleven days before the date the BID published its lights announcement last year, so we should know the answer before the tree goes up.

The council’s own festive weekend, and it is not a switch-on

The thing the council actually puts on in the town centre is A Very Croydon Christmas, a free weekend of outdoor performance and crafts in and around the Croydon Clocktower. It is not billed as a lights switch-on and it does not turn anything on. It lands in the first week of December, three weeks after the lights are already up.

2025: Friday 5 to Sunday 7 December, free. It opened with two Carol Ceilidh Concerts by the Wandle Ceilidh Band, one for families and one for adults, and those were the only ticketed part of the weekend at £2 and £5, booked in advance. Everything else was free: a living snow globe and a “curious Christmas tree” lighting High Street and Katharine Street, DJ Frietmachine, and Miss Murphy’s pantomime pony craft workshop and photobooth. (Culture Croydon)

The Mayor’s newsletter the following week described “the Living Snow Globe, and flying carpet whooshing through our streets”, so it drew a crowd. (Croydon Council, 12 December 2025)

The council used the same name for its December programme in 2024, so this is a fixture rather than a one-off. No 2026 dates are published. Culture Croydon’s events calendar, read on 3 September 2026, runs out after Croydon Harvest on 3 October and carries nothing at all for November, December or January. In 2025 the event page went up on 28 November, a week before the event itself, which is very late notice for a weekend you might want to plan around.

The one switch-on a Mayor does attend

There is a working switch-on ceremony in this borough that is not in the town centre and not in the district list below. On Friday 15 November 2024 the Executive Mayor switched on the festive lights in the Restaurant Quarter of South Croydon, which are funded by the South Croydon Business Association rather than by the council or the BID. (Croydon Council, 15 November 2024)

That is the only Croydon lights switch-on the Mayor records attending in the newsletters we can read. No 2026 date is published.

The district switch-ons

Six neighbourhood centres in the borough have run a lights switch-on or a Christmas market in recent years. The dates below are from the council’s own record of licensed public events, which lists them with times and locations.

A caution about that source. The council embeds a public Google Calendar on its parks pages, and it is where these six entries come from. Read directly, its iCal feed holds 51 events in total, the last of them on 26 July 2024, with no entry edited since 19 July 2024. Two Christmas seasons have passed without an addition. Treat it as a record of what these events looked like, not as a listing of what is on.

Selsdon

Run by the Selsdon Residents’ Association, which raises the money for the High Street lights itself. Annual household membership is £5, paid in June, and the association says any additional donation goes to the Christmas lights fund. Its 2025 fund was also supported by fourteen named local traders, from the Tudor Library and the Golden Ark micropub to Raz Barbers and Selsdon Nail Salon. (Selsdon Residents’ Association, read 3 September 2026)

The association’s news panel currently runs to the September community fair and the model railway show. No 2026 switch-on date is published.

Sanderstead

Held on Limpsfield Road, organised by the residents’ association and the Rotary club with sponsorship from Paul Meakin estate agents, who also host Santa.

In 2025 it went badly. Hundreds of people turned out on Saturday 29 November and the lights did not come on, because the council had not set the timer. (Inside Croydon, 30 November 2025) Worth knowing if you are deciding whether to make the trip on a cold evening: the switch-on is a charity party in its own right, and the lights themselves are on a council timer rather than a switch anyone pulls.

Coulsdon

Coulsdon’s Yuletide Magic on Brighton Road is the biggest of the six. It is run by the Coulsdon Community Partnership, registered charity 1201996, and the 2025 event ran Saturday 6 December, 11am to 7pm, with a holiday market, a funfair including a new helter-skelter, artificial snowfall, a stage programme, and Santa’s grotto at the Fine Toad, 35 Chipstead Valley Road, CR5 2RB, entered from the rear. (Coulsdon Community Partnership)

The partnership’s events page still fronts the 2025 event, so 2026 is not announced. Yuletide Magic fell on the first Saturday of December in 2022 (3 December), 2023 (2 December) and 2025 (6 December). On that pattern the 2026 date would be Saturday 5 December, but that is our arithmetic and not the organiser’s announcement. Stall bookings go through team@coulsdonpartnership.org, and stallholder recruitment usually opens before the public date does.

Purley

Purley BID’s own Christmas page says that “over the years” its festive programme has included winter lights, a Christmas lights and tree switch-on, and a market. It names no date for any of them. (Purley BID) The BID’s news feed, checked on 3 September 2026, has nothing festive in it yet. Its last dated Christmas market announcement was Saturday 25 November 2023, 12pm to 4pm, at 50 High Street, CR8 2AA, posted on 31 October 2023, which suggests a late-October announcement window.

Note the small conflict there: Purley BID’s own announcement says the market ran to 4pm, the council’s licensed events record says 5pm.

New Addington and Old Coulsdon

Both appear only in the council’s stale events calendar. New Addington’s is the one to watch if you want fireworks with your switch-on: the 2023 entry describes funfair, food, Santa and fireworks on Central Parade. Neither has a published 2026 date, and neither has an organiser publishing online in the way Selsdon and Coulsdon do.

The shopping centres

Centrale and The Whitgift run their own festive programme, and in 2025 it ran from 29 November to 24 December.

• Santa’s Christmas Skyride at Centrale, opposite House of Fraser: an enclosed elevator ride to meet Santa, with a reindeer soft toy included. Group rates were new for 2025 at £5.50 per child for groups of four or more, including two free adult tickets, with additional adults at £2
• The Giant Christmas Pudding at The Whitgift, opposite River Island: free, no booking, with twelve days of free Christmas craft workshops and live performances

(Croydon BID, 10 November 2025)

Those are 2025 details. The centres announced them in the second week of November, so expect the 2026 programme at about the same time.

The town centre Christmas market changes name and venue every year. In 2024 it was the Whitgift Christmas Market in Whitgift Square, 14 to 24 December, stalls of local makers with free workshops (Croydon BID, 2 December 2024). In 2025 it was Made By Croydon, indoors on the lower ground floor of Centrale at 21 North End, CR0 1TY, running Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 6pm, up to 24 December, as the first venture in a new Creative Enterprise Zone space (Croydon Council, 3 December 2025). Neither has a 2026 successor announced, and both were announced in December, after they had already opened. Surrey Street market trades six days a week all year and does not become a Christmas market.

When to check back

Every organiser above announces late, and the order has been consistent:

• Late October: Purley BID, and the Coulsdon stallholder call
• First week of November: Croydon BID’s lights announcement
• Second week of November: Centrale and Whitgift
• Mid to late November: the Selsdon and Sanderstead switch-on evenings
• First Saturday of December: Coulsdon’s Yuletide Magic, and the middle of the council’s own A Very Croydon Christmas weekend, which is usually listed only a week ahead

We will update this page as each date lands. If you are heading into the town centre for the lights, our parking in Croydon page has the tariffs, and roadworks and travel has anything on the approach.

For the rest of the season, see Croydon pantomime, Croydon fireworks and bonfire night and Croydon Harvest and the Walnut Fair on 3 and 4 October.