It's official: here is this year's Rockefeller Center Christmas tree (spoiler alert: it's from NY!)

The most famous Christmas tree in the world is coming from just upstate. Rockefeller Center revealed that the 2025 tree will hail from East Greenbush, New York, a small town near Albany where it’s been the pride of the Russ family for more than 60 years.

Standing 75 feet tall and about 45 feet wide, the Norway spruce was donated by the family, who says it’s been the backdrop of countless celebrations.

“I’m excited to make more cherished memories with my family and childhood friends as it becomes the world’s Christmas tree,” said homeowner Judy Russ, who lives in the family’s historic home with her 7-year-old son, Liam.

The tree, estimated to be about 75 years old, will be cut on November 6 and make the 130-mile trip to Manhattan two days later, where it will be raised on Rockefeller Plaza ahead of its grand lighting on Wednesday, December 3. Once it’s in place, crews will spend weeks stringing more than 50,000 energy-efficient LED lights and hoisting the glittering Swarovski star designed by Daniel Libeskind—nine feet across, 900 pounds and studded with over 3 million crystals.

Head gardener Erik Pauzé, who has been handpicking the Rockefeller Center tree for more than three decades, discovered this one after a photo landed on his desk through a security supervisor.

“As soon as I saw it, I knew it was perfect,” Pauzé told The Center Magazine. He even returned several times throughout the year to water and care for it himself.

For Pauzé, the search is part science, part sentiment.

“What I look for is a tree you’d want in your living room, but on a grander scale,” he explained. “It needs to make people smile the second they see it.”

When the season wraps in mid-January, the East Greenbush spruce will begin a second life: milled into lumber and donated to Habitat for Humanity, part of a sustainable tradition that began in 2007.

“Every tree we select not only brings joy to New Yorkers during the holiday season, but it also continues to give back long after it leaves Rockefeller Center,” Pauzé said—a fittingly heartwarming encore for the most famous Christmas tree in the world.