Festival of Lights at the Mission Inn 2026 — Riverside

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The first time you see it, you stop walking. Ten million lights wrapped around a century-old hotel in downtown Riverside, and the building itself looks like it is breathing — towers and turrets and Spanish arches outlined in white and gold against a cold November sky. Your phone cannot capture it. Nothing can. The scale is absurd and the beauty is sincere and you stand there with strangers who are all doing the same thing you are doing, which is nothing at all except looking up.

The Festival of Lights at the Mission Inn has run every holiday season since 1992. The Grand Switch-On Ceremony on November 22 draws tens of thousands to watch the building come alive for the first time — a concert, a dance performance, and then the moment when every bulb fires at once and the crowd makes a sound that is not quite a cheer and not quite a gasp. After opening night, the lights stay on through January 6, and the surrounding blocks of downtown Riverside fill with food vendors, carolers, horse-drawn carriages, and a walk-through experience that takes longer than you planned because you keep stopping.

Riverside is an hour from San Diego, an hour from LA, and forty minutes from the IE core. This is not a drive you will regret.

November 22, 2026 through January 6, 2027. Switch-On Ceremony at 5 PM on November 22. The Mission Inn Hotel & Spa, 3649 Mission Inn Ave, Riverside, CA 92501.