Seoul Christmas Market and Lantern Festival 2026: What to Expect

From mid-December to early January, the strip from Gwanghwamun Square down Cheonggyecheon to Bosingak becomes Seoul’s winter festival: a Christmas market and a media-facade show on the palace gate, lanterns on the stream, a 1,000-won skating rink, and the New Year’s Eve bell. Almost all of it is free and it all happens after dark. The 2026 dates had not been announced when I wrote this, so below are last winter’s dates, the usual pattern, and how a short, cold hanbok rental fits around it.

What is Seoul Winter Festa, and are the 2026 dates out?

Seoul Winter Festa is the city’s umbrella name for a cluster of winter events, most of them along one walkable line in Jongno and Jung-gu. The 2025 edition ran for 24 days, from 12 December 2025 to 4 January 2026, across seven sites.

As of 9 October 2026, the 2026 edition has no confirmed dates. Seoul’s official festival portal lists it as planned for 4 December 2026 to 31 January 2027, marked as provisional. It lists the 2026 Gwanghwamun Market only as “December (planned)” and the 2026 lantern festival as “dates to be decided”. The festival’s own site, winta.co.kr, still shows last year’s edition.

So treat everything below as last year’s numbers. The two most recent editions followed the same shape: opening on a Friday in mid-December (13 December 2024, then 12 December 2025), the light show ending on the first Sunday of January, the lanterns running a week or two longer, and the rink going on into early February. The market moved: it ran to 5 January in 2024–25 but closed on 31 December last year. If you are booking flights now, aim for the second half of December and you will very likely catch all of it.

Last winter at a glance

What	Where	When last time (2025–26)	Cost
Gwanghwamun Market (Christmas market)	Gwanghwamun Square, from the Sejong Center end	12–31 Dec · 17:30–21:30, later 22:30 · until midnight on 31 Dec	Free entry
Seoul Light Gwanghwamun (media facade)	Gwanghwamun gate and the north end of the square	12 Dec – 4 Jan · Sun–Thu 17:30–21:30, Fri–Sat 17:30–22:00	Free
Seoul Lantern Festival	Cheonggyecheon, Cheonggye Plaza to Samildaegyo (about 1.1 km)	12 Dec – 18 Jan · 18:00–23:00	Free
Seoul Plaza skating rink	Seoul Plaza, opposite City Hall	19 Dec – 8 Feb · Sun–Fri 10:00–21:30, Sat and holidays 10:00–23:00	1,000 won per hour, skates and helmet included
New Year's Eve bell ringing	Bosingak, Jonggak	31 Dec · programme 23:00–00:20, bell at midnight	Free

Dates and hours are from the 2025–26 edition and are correct as of October 2026. The 2026 programme had not been published when I wrote this; check winta.co.kr or the Seoul city announcements before you go.

Is the Gwanghwamun Christmas market worth going to?

If you are expecting Strasbourg, no. If you are expecting a bright, crowded, cheerful evening on a square you were going to cross anyway, yes.

Last year’s market was a “Santa Village” starting from the Sejong Center end of the square: around a hundred stalls of seasonal goods and food, a tree of roughly 15 metres, photo zones, and a Rudolph carousel you could ride free by collecting stamps on a leaflet from the information desk. Entry costs nothing; you pay for what you eat or buy.

Two things catch people out. First, it opened at 17:30, not in the morning. If you walk past at noon on your way to the palace, you will see shuttered stalls. Second, last year it closed on 31 December. The year before it ran to 5 January, so check, but do not plan a January trip around it.

The square itself, with its underground exhibitions and statues, is covered in my Gwanghwamun Square guide. On Saturday afternoons, check for rallies on Sejong-daero before you plan anything there.

Seoul Light Gwanghwamun: the palace gate as a screen

From the same evening, Gwanghwamun gate itself becomes a projection surface. Last year’s show ran from 17:30 to 21:30 Sunday to Thursday and to 22:00 on Fridays and Saturdays, with a light tunnel north of the King Sejong statue and an LED pavilion alongside. It runs in cycles through the evening, so if you arrive halfway through, wait for the next one.

Stand in the middle of the square, far enough back to get the whole gate in. On New Year’s Eve the screens around the square ran a countdown to midnight.

When is the Seoul Lantern Festival, and how long does it take?

The lanterns are the longest-running part. Last winter they ran from 12 December to 18 January, 18:00 to 23:00, after being extended twice: closing time moved from 22:00 to 23:00 a few days in, and the end date moved from 4 January to 18 January. The city counted 2.77 million visitors in the first 20 days.

The main section starts at Cheonggye Plaza, just south of Gwanghwamun Square, and follows the stream east for about 1.1 km to Samildaegyo bridge. At a slow walk with photographs it takes about an hour; on a December weekend after 19:00, allow longer, because the path below street level is narrow and you go at the speed of the crowd. The busiest stretch last year was between Gwanggyo and Jangtonggyo bridges. If you want a quieter photograph, look for the reflections under the bridges.

Smaller sections on the Uicheon stream and near DDP closed on 4 January; only the central stretch was extended.

For the stream in daylight, without the crowds, see the Cheonggyecheon section of what to do after you return the hanbok.

The skating rink at Seoul Plaza

The outdoor rink in front of City Hall opened a week after the festival last year and ran until 8 February. A one-hour session cost 1,000 won with skates and a helmet included, with half the tickets sold online a week ahead and half on the day. Holders of the Discover Seoul Pass, the city’s tourist pass for foreign visitors, skated free.

It is a five-minute walk from Cheonggye Plaza and directly across the road from Deoksugung’s main gate. Deoksugung stays open until 21:00, so a winter evening here can be the rink, the palace and the lanterns without getting on a train. The night palaces are covered in Seoul’s palaces at night.

Bosingak on New Year’s Eve: should you go?

At midnight on 31 December, the bell at Bosingak in Jonggak is struck 33 times. Last year the programme ran from 23:00 to 00:20, with performances before and a rock band after. It is free and needs no registration.

Go for the crowd at midnight, not for a view of the bell; unless you arrive very early, you will be watching a screen at the end of a street of people. The practical points from last year:

• Roads around Bosingak were closed from 18:00 on 31 December to 07:00 on 1 January, and dozens of bus routes were diverted.
• Jonggak Station was skipped from 23:00 to 01:00. Use City Hall, Jongno 3-ga, Euljiro 1-ga or Gwanghwamun Station instead.
• The subway ran late. Last trains reached their terminals at around 02:00, but they get very full, so do not count on catching the last one.
• A cold-wave advisory was in force that night. Dress for standing still outdoors for an hour, which is colder than walking.

Last year the city published the transport arrangements on 30 December, so look for them in the final days of the year.

December or January: which half are you in?

The festival thins out as it goes on.

• Mid-December to 31 December: everything is on. The market, the light show, the lanterns and the rink, with Christmas and New Year’s Eve at the end.
• 1–4 January: last year the market had gone by now; the light show and the lanterns were still on.
• After the first week of January: last year, the lanterns until 18 January and the rink until 8 February. If the 2026 edition runs to the end of January, as the city’s provisional listing suggests, January may get more this time.

To check the weather for your dates, the hanbok date planner shows six years of recorded temperatures and the sunset time for any date. Sunset in Seoul is around 17:17 on 21 December.

Can you do it in hanbok?

You can, but the clock is the problem, not the cold.

Time	What happens in December
16:00	Last entry at Gyeongbokgung (closes 17:00, November–February)
≈17:20	Sunset
17:30	Light show and market open on Gwanghwamun Square
18:00	Lanterns light up on Cheonggyecheon
18:00–19:00	Most hanbok shops near the palace close

The palace day and the festival evening barely overlap. Three ways to handle that:

1. Palace in the afternoon, lights in your own coat. Rent for two hours, around 13:00 to 15:00, see the palace in daylight (and in hanbok it is free), return, and come back at 17:30. This is what I would do. Two hours is also about as long as a December hanbok stays comfortable.
2. Hanbok under the lights. Pick up mid-afternoon on a longer rental, do the palace before 16:00, and walk the five or ten minutes down to the gate as the show starts. Check the shop’s winter closing time first. Cham Hanbok, for one, closes at 18:00 from December to February instead of 19:00. That gives you about half an hour of dusk in front of the gate, not an evening.
3. Skip the palace that day. Do the market and the gate in hanbok from 17:30 and return before closing. It is short, but those are the photographs people actually want from December.

For the cold: thin thermal layers in a fitted cut and with a low neckline, because the jeogori collar shows anything high, plus a durumagi overcoat. Many shops lend one in winter but list it inconsistently, so ask when you book. The full winter section is in hanbok by season. Gloves you can pull off in one go are worth more than anything else you pack.

Avoid Tuesdays. Gyeongbokgung is closed, and so are many of the shops around it.

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I ran a hanbok rental shop opposite Gyeongbokgung from 2015 to 2025. In December the counter went quiet at about four, when the palace stopped letting people in, and the question I heard most in those last hours was where the lights were. The answer was always “not yet”. The customers who got the best of both went to the palace early, changed back, had dinner, and came out again after dark.

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