Woking Christmas Lights Switch-On: 2026 Date Not Yet Set

The 2026 date has not been announced. As of 5 September 2026 there is nothing about Christmas on Woking Borough Council’s newsroom, and its site search returns only last year’s festive listings. That is normal for Woking rather than a warning sign: the council has announced this event roughly a week before it happens, four years running.

Here is what the record actually supports, so you can plan around it before the date lands.

When it has been held

Every switch-on in the council’s newsroom has been a Thursday in the second half of November, in Jubilee Square, around a tree donated by Woking Asian Business Forum.

Sources: the council’s newsroom items for 2025, 2024, 2023 and 2022.

Two things fall out of that table. The date has moved earlier every year since 2022, from the 24th to the 23rd, then the 21st, then the 20th. And the switch-on moment itself has moved earlier in the evening, from 6pm in 2023 and 2024 to 5pm in 2025, which caught people out who arrived at half five for a countdown that had already happened.

There is no published rule, such as “the third Thursday”, so this is a pattern and not a date. Treat late November Thursdays as the window and check back.

How late the announcement comes

The council published the 2025 event on 13 November, seven days before it. It published 2024 on 15 November, six days before. In 2023 the news landed on 14 November for a 23 November event, and in 2022 on 18 November for the 24th.

So expect the 2026 date in the second week of November, and do not read the silence in September or October as a cancellation. It has looked exactly like this in each of the last four years.

What the evening is

Free, and centred on the tree in Jubilee Square. The recurring ingredients across all four years are a celebrity or civic guest doing the honours, live music and choirs, and a Christmas market that stays in town for the rest of the festive season rather than packing up the same night.

The named guests give a sense of the level: Dame Penelope Keith in 2022, the former Chelsea striker Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink in 2023, Christopher Biggins in 2024 while he was in the New Victoria panto, and a secret guest alongside Santa Claus and the Woking Rotary Club sleigh in 2025.

The 2025 tree was an eight metre Nordic spruce donated by Woking Asian Business Forum, which has sponsored it since 2009, with the lights sponsored by Boz’s Fruit and Veg. Woking Rock Choir performed from 4.30pm, paused at 5pm for the switch-on, then carried on.

Victoria Place, and Santa

The shopping centre runs its own festive programme alongside the square, and in recent years that has meant a free Santa’s grotto in Central Square, plus free activities such as bauble decorating and an elf station.

Nothing for 2026 has been published. Victoria Place’s what’s on feed currently runs to September and October items, its 2025 grotto booking page has been taken down, and the grotto ran on selected dates between 22 November and 23 December last year. Expect the booking link to reappear in November.

West Byfleet has its own switch-on

If you are in the KT14 end of the borough, the village event is a genuinely separate one, and it is bigger than the word “village” suggests.

The 2025 edition ran on Saturday 22 November from 12pm, across Station Approach and the newly opened Botanical Place, with more than 45 market stalls, a Santa’s grotto from 1pm, and an afternoon of performances leading to the switch-on at 6pm (Woking News & Mail, 10 November 2025). That was its third year.

It is organised by West Byfleet Together, run entirely by volunteers, and funded by local businesses, sponsorship and donations, “with no financial support from the council”. No 2026 date has been published, and the Byfleet, West Byfleet and Pyrford Residents’ Association diary carries nothing festive in November either.

That diary does carry one confirmed festive fixture: St John’s West Byfleet’s Community Christmas Tree Festival, on 5, 6, 7 and 8 December 2026, from 2.30pm, running to 6pm on the Saturday and Sunday and 7.30pm on the Monday and Tuesday.

Getting there and parking

Jubilee Square is a two minute walk from Woking station and sits between Christ Church and Victoria Place, so the town centre decks are the obvious choice. The council’s town centre car parks charge a flat £2.20 for any period from 6pm to 5.59am, which covers an evening event comfortably, and Blue Badge holders park free with an exit sticker.

Victoria Place Red, Blue, Yellow and Green, plus Heathside Crescent, are ticketless ANPR car parks where you pay before you exit at a paystation or through the JustPark app. Tariffs, permit prices and which car parks take cash are all on our Woking parking page.

A switch-on in Jubilee Square needs no road closures, since the square is pedestrianised. If anything is being dug up nearby that week it will appear on our Woking roadworks and travel page. Looking for something to do in the meantime, our things to do in Woking page has opening times checked this summer.

What this page will say next

The moment the council publishes the 2026 date, this page gets the date, the start time, the switch-on time and the guest, with the newsroom link. The same applies to West Byfleet Together’s date and to the Victoria Place grotto booking window.

Checked on 5 September 2026 against Woking Borough Council’s newsroom and site search, Victoria Place’s what’s on feed, the Woking News & Mail and the Byfleet, West Byfleet and Pyrford Residents’ Association diary.