The 2026 Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting has officially been announced and it’s happening earlier than you think

It’s still September, but Rockefeller Center has already put Christmas on the calendar: the 2026 Christmas tree will officially arrive in Midtown on Saturday, November 7, with the big annual lighting ceremony set for Wednesday, December 2. If you usually wait until December to start thinking about the holidays, here's your early warning.

The tree’s arrival will coincide with Meet the Tree Day, when New Yorkers can get their first look at the Norway spruce before it receives several weeks of attention from Rockefeller Center’s decorating crew. At that point, it will just be a giant tree in a plaza. But by December 2, it should have the lights and the Swarovski star that make it recognizable from several crowded blocks away.

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Rockefeller Center has yet to reveal where this year’s tree grew, how tall it is or who donated it and details about the lighting ceremony’s performers and hosts are also still to come. The event is typically televised on NBC, though anyone who has tried to see the switch flipped in person knows the crowd is an attraction in its own right. The tradition began more modestly in 1931, when construction workers at Rockefeller Center put up a 20-foot balsam fir. The first official lighting followed in 1933. 

For a sense of the scale involved, last year’s tree stood 75 feet tall, weighed about 11 tons and came from East Greenbush, New York. It wore more than 50,000 multicolored LED lights. The Swarovski star that tops the tree weighs roughly 900 pounds and contains around 3 million crystals.

You don’t need to brave the lighting ceremony to see it, either. The tree will remain on display after December 2, with visiting hours still to be announced. The Rink at Rockefeller Center opens for its season on October 10, so skaters can get onto the ice weeks before the spruce arrives.

For now, mark the two dates: November 7 to meet the tree, December 2 to see it lit. Whether you’re ready for Christmas in September is, thankfully, still up to you.