Aylsham Town Council has not announced a 2026 switch-on. Last year it ran 5pm to 9pm on the last Friday in November, which points at Friday 27 November.

No 2026 date has been announced. Checked on 5 September, Aylsham Town Council has published nothing about this year’s Christmas lights switch-on, and last year’s event page has been taken down: the URL now returns “Sorry, that page has moved.”

Visit Aylsham, the council’s own listings site, has nothing in its calendar after 22 October. So the gap is real, not something hiding on a page you have not found.

That said, the planning is well under way behind the scenes, and the council’s own committee papers show exactly how far it has got.

The date to pencil in

Friday 27 November. That is our inference, not an announcement.

The 2025 switch-on ran on Friday 28 November, the last Friday in November. The last Friday in November 2026 is the 27th. One year is a thin pattern, so treat it as the night to keep free rather than the night to book around.

What last year’s evening looked like

From Aylsham Town Council’s own event page for 2025:

  • Friday 28 November, 5pm to 9pm, Aylsham Market Place
  • 5pm: stalls open in the Town Hall, Market Place and Red Lion Street
  • Live performances from the Vocalights Choir, with Christmas music through the evening
  • Santa’s grotto, 6.15pm to 7.45pm, in the Green Room, reached via The Loke, for children aged 12 and under
  • The Christmas Tree Festival in St Michael’s Church
  • Late night opening at many of the town’s shops

Two councils’ worth of work sits behind that. The Christmas Lights Committee buys, installs, switches on and takes down the lights themselves. The Aylsham Community Events Committee runs the switch-on event around them. They keep separate event management plans, and the lights committee’s plan says in terms that it “does not cover the switch on event”.

There is a road closure, and it worked

Worth knowing if you live or trade on the Market Place: the switch-on involves a road closure, and the lights committee’s February wash-up listed “the road closure” among the things that went well in 2025.

It also set itself a job for this year: “to create a list of businesses impacted by the road closure.” The committee’s management plan requires the closure to be agreed and applied for two months before installation, so if you need to know the extent of it, the second half of September is when to ask.

How far the planning has got

The council’s published minutes give a clearer picture than any announcement would.

The Christmas Lights Committee met on 24 June 2026 and agreed an updated event management plan carrying every improvement raised in February. It also confirmed a fundraiser on 31 October 2026 with the band Backtracking booked, noting that the event normally sells 80 tickets and could go to 90 if the number of tables is cut. The 2026/27 budget is £1,000 income and £1,500 expenditure, against £2,096.82 held in earmarked reserves. Its next meeting was set for Thursday 10 September.

The Community Events Committee has had a harder run of it. Its meetings on 17 June and 19 August were both inquorate, needing four members and getting three, so nothing could be decided either time and every agenda item was deferred. Its next meeting is Wednesday 16 September at 2pm in the Council Chamber. That is the realistic first opportunity for a 2026 switch-on date to be agreed in public.

The other things the committee fixed for this year

The February wash-up is unusually frank, and some of it will show on the night. What did not go well in 2025: not everyone had a helmet because people took ones they did not need and they ran out; the vote of thanks did not happen on the day; fewer volunteers turned up for the take-down; and the lights in the Black Boys car park had to come down early because of a clash with the height of a waste lorry.

The fixes agreed include photographs and instructions inside every box of lights, so volunteers who do not know a particular station can still work effectively, and tagging the indoor garlands with their locations.

The council also asks for volunteers each year through its social media and through Cittaslow, so if you want to be on the cherry picker rather than under it, that is the route.

Parking on the night

Both of Broadland District Council’s Aylsham car parks are free: Burgh Road with 57 spaces and The Buttsland with 58. Neither allows overnight parking or camping. With the Market Place closed, those two plus the on-street spaces outside the closure are what you have.

Our parking in Broadland page has the full list of the district’s eight free car parks and the restrictions on each. Check Broadland roadworks and travel before you come in, because a closure elsewhere on the Aylsham approaches on a Friday evening will bite.

Where the date will appear

Watch three places, in this order:

  1. Visit Aylsham’s events list, which the town council runs
  2. Aylsham Town Council’s events page
  3. The Community Events Committee minutes, published within two weeks of each meeting, and the Christmas Lights Committee papers

The council office is open Monday to Thursday 9.30am to 3pm and Friday 9.30am to 12.30pm, on 01263 733354. This page will be updated the day a date is published.

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