The city put dates on Nights of Lights on Friday, in a release whose own subhead promises free shuttles and the return of downtown entertainment. The lighting ceremony of the holiday tree and the canopy of live oaks around the Plaza de la Constitucion begins promptly at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 21, and the 2026-27 season continues through Monday, Jan. 18, 2027, the first season the city has dated in public since the commission resolved in March that the dates would stand from year to year without further action.

Those two dates trace to two different documents, one adopted from the dais in March and one signed with a tour operator in April, and the release names neither of them. The opening follows the motion the City Commission adopted on March 23, which fixed the season permanently to begin the Saturday prior to Thanksgiving, and since Thanksgiving falls on Nov. 26 this year that Saturday is Nov. 21.

The close follows the trolley operator’s performance contract instead, approved on the April 27 consent agenda with dates of performance running Nov. 22, 2026 through Jan. 18, 2027. It stops one day short of the adopted motion, which carried the season to the Tuesday after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, a holiday observed this season on Monday, Jan. 18, whose following Tuesday is Jan. 19 on anybody’s calendar.

Whether the engrossed resolution reads with the motion or with the contract is still not something this paper can check. The packet copy of Resolution 2026-07 is unsigned, its adoption line reading “this day of , 2026,” and the signed version has not been published anywhere this newsroom has found.

Getting to a published date took the commission most of a year. Eight of its meetings between October 2025 and September 2026 carried a Nights of Lights item, and the only one whose work outlasts a single season is the March resolution the release does not mention.

Light-Up Night, as the city lists it

The evening of Nov. 21 runs Showtime USA at 4 p.m. in the Parque de Menendez at City Hall, 75 King St., and the All Star Orchestra at 5:30 p.m. at the gazebo in the plaza. The lighting itself is at 6:30, which the release says begins promptly.

The shuttles are free, by the release’s own subhead. They are the practical half of the announcement, because the two restricted streets sit in the middle of where everybody is going.

Shuttle Runs Park at Drop-off and pickup
Main, north and west city 1 to 11 p.m. St. Johns County Health Department, 200 San Sebastian View; Broudy’s Lot, 198 W. King St.; San Marco Lot, 301 San Marco Ave. Visitor Information Center, 10 S. Castillo Dr.
Anastasia Island, Light-Up Night only 4 to 11 p.m. Anastasia Baptist Church, 1650 A1A South; R.B. Hunt Elementary, 125 Magnolia Dr. Bridge of Lions, east end

Parking is prohibited all day on Cathedral Place between Avenida Menendez and Cordova Street and on the north side of King Street between Cordova and Avenida Menendez. Cathedral Place closes to vehicles from 5 to 8 p.m., and the release reserves the police department’s discretion to change any of it on security and public safety grounds. For island and beach residents within walking distance of its stops, the city recommends the free STAR Circulator as the walk-and-ride, a service whose posted Friday and Saturday hours run to 11 p.m. and whose departure times and frequency the city has never printed anywhere this paper has found.

The money underneath the dates

Nothing about the funding picture has moved since this paper read the March minutes. Commissioners are recorded there saying the county had provided $850,000 toward the event and that the city on its own could pay for thirteen days of it, and the season the city has now announced runs fifty-nine days, which is this paper’s count from Nov. 21 through Jan. 18 inclusive.

The tree lights at 6:30 on Nov. 21.