Christmas in Ljubljana: a riverside market and a city switched on

Where is the Christmas market in Ljubljana?

There is no single site, which is what I like most about it. In 2025 the gift huts were on Breg and the food and drink stalls ran along Breg, the Cankarjevo and Gallusovo embankments, Congress Square, Prešeren Square, Stritarjeva Street and the corner of Wolfova Street. Pogačar Square, next to the market, and the castle courtyard had their own stalls. That makes the natural route a walk downstream from the Triple Bridge and back through Ljubljana Old Town.

The castle deserves its own trip up. In 2025 its market opened daily from 11am to 6pm until 6 January, with more than ninety decorated firs, and St George’s Chapel showed Mira Rismondo’s nativity of life-size wooden figures until 2 February. If you want to add the tower and the museums, Ljubljana Castle has the prices and the ways up.

How I would plan a festive weekend

Flying in from the UK for a long weekend, I would arrive on the switch-on Friday or go between Christmas and New Year, when there are more concerts. Saturday morning for the castle and the nativity, the afternoon for the walk along the huts and, after dark, one of the boats that in 2025 cruised the decorated river from 5 December to 6 January. The guided walk with mulled wine or tea, offered in 2025 from 29 November to 6 January, is a good first evening.

Staying central changes the trip, because you walk back at any hour and do not depend on buses. The neighbourhoods are weighed up in where to stay in Ljubljana.

The switch-on on 27 November

By tradition the lights go on at 5pm on the Friday before the first Sunday of Advent, next to the Prešeren Monument. There is a short ceremony, the mayor speaks and a countdown ends with every decoration in town lit at once. In 2025 that was 28 November, and zone 1 buses were free from 4pm, with extra services on the main roads into the centre.

The designer is Urban Modic, and the idea changes every winter. The 2025 display was about the golden ratio and different beings living in harmony, and it reused restored pieces of «Universal Ljubljana», the series his father Zmago Modic created. The city spent €265,000 on decorating and lighting the streets. Ten Christmas trees completed the picture, the main one 18 m tall with around 8 km of lights on Prešeren Square, plus 89 living trees that went back into the ground after the holidays.

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Concerts, children’s events and New Year’s Eve

The 2025 programme put music on five stages. Pogačar Square had acts from 28 November to 31 December; Novi trg from 15 to 25 December; Mestni trg had school choirs, the Christmas Eve concert and the New Year party; and Congress Square, the main New Year’s Eve venue, started on 26 December. For children there was the Magic Forest workshops, parades for St Nicholas, the Ice Queen and Grandfather Frost, and street theatre outside the Puppet Theatre.

On the 31st the youngest start early, with a party at 4pm and a symbolic New Year at 5pm on Congress Square. At 9pm the parties begin in four squares, the countdown is projected on the castle tower and at midnight there are five minutes of fireworks from the hill. In 2025 buses ran all night, and from 26 December to 2 January zone 1 travel was free after 5pm, park and ride included. I explain tickets and the Urbana card in getting around Ljubljana.

Still to be confirmed

On 17 October 2026 the city had already opened the call for stallholders at the 2026 St Nicholas Fair and Festive Fair, but not the programme. The Tourist Board’s dates are the ones to go by; the times of each concert, the boat trips and whether buses will be free again in 2026 will go on this page as soon as they are out. Wherever a figure in the tables is from 2025, the row says so.

If you are staying the night, see the best hotel deals in Liubliana for your dates: the well-placed rooms go fast.