Christmas in Las Vegas 2026: Lights, Ice Skating, NFR Week & What's Open on Christmas Day

The weather is walkable, the resorts compete over decorations the way they compete over everything else, and outside two spike windows, rodeo week and New Year's, rooms go for some of the lowest rates of the year. Here is the season, sorted by what it costs.

Free Christmas displays: Bellagio Conservatory, Venetian tree, Wynn atrium, Fremont Street

• Bellagio Conservatory. The holiday display is free and open around the clock. Bellagio announces the 2026 dates and theme in the fall; the 2025 display ran November 14 to January 3, with a 42-foot tree, 8,700 ornaments and a walk-through train. Evenings are packed; before 9 a.m. it's nearly empty. The Fountains switch to holiday music for December through the first weekend of January. Details on our Bellagio page.
• The Venetian raises a 65-foot tree with 50,000 lights on the Doge's Palace plaza, outdoors and lit all night, and has added a projection-mapped holiday show on the clock tower in recent seasons.
• Wynn's atriums: themed miniature villages, thousands of poinsettias, viewable 24 hours.
• The Cosmopolitan's Chandelier hosts a free walk-in holiday pop-up on its middle level, an illuminated arch and glowing trees; the drinks are the paid part. The LINQ Promenade puts up its own tree and holiday programming.
• Fremont Street runs its canopy shows free every night at the top of the hour from 6 p.m., with holiday programming in December. Off-Strip: Sam's Town's Mystic Falls Park is a genuinely free indoor winter wonderland with an hourly laser show, and Downtown Summerlin runs a free holiday parade on Friday and Saturday evenings from late November through the weekend before Christmas; last year it ran November 21 to December 22, and 2026 dates are announced later.

The three big free displays chain into one self-guided evening walk, north to south: Wynn's atrium, then the Venetian tree, then the Bellagio Conservatory. Zero tickets, zero time slots, and the Conservatory is open all night when the crowds go home.

Christmas lights in Las Vegas: Ethel M, Glittering Lights, Enchant, Magical Forest and the Henderson drive-throughs

• Ethel M Holiday Cactus Garden in Henderson, about 20 minutes out, is confirmed for 2026: November 5 through January 3, nightly 5–10 p.m., a million lights over Nevada's largest botanical cactus garden. Entry was $3 last season with proceeds to local charities, the cheapest light show in the valley. Mind the holiday hours: short evenings December 24 and 31, closed Christmas Day, Santa photos only through December 23.
• Glittering Lights at the Speedway is confirmed for November 6, 2026 to January 3, 2027: a three-mile drive-through with 600-plus displays, $39 per car in cash and $44 by card. It sells half-price tickets every July, the biggest discount of its year, worth grabbing if you plan a December trip in summer.
• Enchant returns to Las Vegas Ballpark at Downtown Summerlin November 20 to December 27 for its sixth season, with a four-million-light maze, skating and Santa; tickets started at $35 last season.
• Magical Forest at Opportunity Village runs a non-contiguous calendar: open Thanksgiving weekend, the first two NFR weekends, then December 10–24 and 26 through January 1, dark on Christmas Day. Around $25, but genuinely all-inclusive: unlimited rides, the train, mini golf. Every ticket funds the nonprofit.
• Henderson drive-throughs: Electric City Light Show, and World of Illumination's Reindeer Road at Cowabunga Bay. Both ran about $39 per vehicle last season through January 4; 2026 dates are announced later.

The three drive-throughs, Glittering Lights and the two Henderson shows, charge per car, not per person: a full vehicle drops the cost under $10 a head. Ethel M and the Henderson drive-throughs sit on the same side of the valley and pair into one evening loop.

Ice skating in Las Vegas - and skiing at Lee Canyon

The Cosmopolitan's rooftop rink is gone for good. It didn't return last winter, the equipment was auctioned off, and most guides still send you there. The Strip's rink is now the Oasis Ice Rink at Fontainebleau: about 7,500 square feet of real ice on the pool deck, free to enter and watch from the firepits, $30–35 to skate with rental included last season, discounted December 24–30 and January 1–4, plus free holiday movie screenings. Out west, Downtown Summerlin's Rock Rink ran $18–22 with rentals, and Enchant has a rink inside the ballpark. The cheapest ice in town is none of these: the Golden Knights' practice facility in Summerlin and the Silver Knights' arena in Henderson run public skates around $10 year-round, and you might catch an NHL practice for free.

For actual snow, Lee Canyon on Mt. Charleston is under an hour from the Strip, a real ski area at 8,500 feet that opens around the Friday before Thanksgiving and makes its own snow, so the hill runs even in a dry December. Pricing is airline-style dynamic: advance online tickets have started as low as $14–35 while walk-up powder Saturdays hit $129, so book online a week ahead. The family headline: kids 12 and under ski free all season. Sledding is less reliable. The famous free meadow is now off-limits to protect butterfly habitat, the paid snow-play lots need a foot of natural snow to open, and some Decembers that snow never comes. Fill the tank in town, carry chains, and don't count on a rideshare back; there's barely any cell service up there.

NFR week, December 3–12: rodeo, Cowboy Christmas, room spikes

The Wrangler National Finals Rodeo runs December 3–12, 2026 at the Thomas & Mack Center: ten straight nights at 5:45 p.m., on a contract that runs through 2035 and adds a million dollars to the purse every year, and the whole town goes country with it. You don't need an arena ticket to join: Cowboy Christmas, the official gift show at the Convention Center, is free daily 9 a.m.–4 p.m. with 375-plus exhibitors, Santa and a live stage; the Junior NFR runs alongside it at the Convention Center over the same ten days, with tickets sold at the door; and South Point, Rio, Westgate and Silverton run free nightly viewing parties that are often a better time than a $130.50 balcony seat. There's even an $80 ticket that gets you inside Thomas & Mack on rodeo night for the saloons and pre-show party, watching the arena on screens.

The catch is pricing: the first NFR weekend has historically run more than double normal December rates. Rodeo starts at 5:45, unusually early for Vegas, so do Cowboy Christmas in the morning and book dinner after 9. And watch December 5 specifically: that night stacks Rascal Flatts at The Colosseum with the Eagles at Sphere, while Dierks Bentley plays Fontainebleau on December 4 and 5, and rooms price accordingly. Already confirmed for this year's rodeo week: Thomas Rhett at The Colosseum on December 10 and 12, 8 p.m., from $106 including fees. The rodeo runs past 8, so it's one or the other on those nights.

December 2026 events: Eagles at Sphere, Raiders, Nutcracker, Great Santa Run, holiday pop-up bars

Confirmed for 2026: the Eagles play Sphere December 4–5 and 11–12, exactly the two rodeo weekends, so those four nights compound; the Raiders host home games December 13 and 20; Nevada Ballet Theatre's Nutcracker runs December 12–27 at the Smith Center; the Great Santa Run, a 5K and one-mile in red suits benefiting Opportunity Village, is Saturday, December 5; Hanukkah begins the evening of December 4; and the Las Vegas Bowl kicks off 12:45 p.m. on December 31 at Allegiant. One correction for older articles: the NBA Cup has left Las Vegas; from 2026 its final rounds play elsewhere. The residency calendar fills in through the fall as headliners announce their holiday runs.

The season's new big-stage ticket is Now You See Me Live, the stage version of the heist-magic films, in the MGM Grand Theater from October 15 with an announced run through January 5, 2027: 7 p.m. most nights with a 9:30 on many, dark Wednesdays, from $77 including fees. It plays straight through the holidays, which makes it one of the few new productions you can actually build a Christmas-week evening around.

Holiday pop-up bars

Every December a handful of bars go full tinsel for the season, free entry, drinks paid, 21+: Miracle on Easy St. at Aria, Bad Elf at Silverton, Santa's Saloon at the Palms, Miracle on Spring Mountain, plus the Chandelier pop-up above. Last season they ran through about December 28; the 2026 versions get announced in November.

What's open on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day (and Christmas dinner)

December 25, 2026 is a Friday and an ordinary operating day: casinos open, most restaurants serving. Last season's price ladder ran from a $17.95 three-course turkey dinner at a locals' 24-hour café through $69.95 prime-rib menus at the Caesars steakhouses to a $350 tasting at the top end, with holiday buffets from about $35 to $80; 2026 menus post by early December. The Neon Museum is open 365 nights a year and the Mob Museum runs shortened Christmas hours. What actually closes: the malls, several light attractions (Ethel M and Magical Forest both go dark on the 25th) and a handful of shows take December 24–25 off, so check the calendar on our show pages. If a show's box office sells no December 25 tickets, it's genuinely dark; if it sells them, it plays.

The Feast of the Seven Fishes menus at the Italian rooms are mostly a December 24 event; showing up on the 25th expecting one is a classic miss. Book Christmas dinner by mid-December; the good rooms fill via OpenTable weeks out.

Las Vegas in December: weather, crowds and the cheapest weeks

Expect highs near 57–60°F early in the month sliding to the mid-50s, lows around 39–40°F: sweater days, real-coat nights, roughly five nights at or below freezing, under an inch of rain all month and sunshine three days out of four. Daylight is the practical constraint: under ten hours, so start Red Rock or Hoover Dam day trips by 9–10 a.m. and you'll still be back before the light shows open at 5.

The pricing calendar splits December in three. Rodeo week prices high. Then comes the sleeper. Roughly December 13–23 is the cheapest stretch of the entire Vegas year: full holiday decoration, mild weather, and Sunday–Thursday rates that run far below weekends. Christmas on a Friday means December 24–27 behaves like a holiday weekend, and from Saturday the 26th rates climb daily toward the New Year's peak, with crowds building from about the 29th; everything stays open. The full seasonal math lives in Best Time to Visit and Las Vegas on a Budget; for the December 31 blowout itself, the fireworks, the road closure and the hotel strategy, see New Year's Eve in Las Vegas 2026–2027.