The Plaza lights are a 100-year-old KC tradition. See ceremony through the years
The annual Country Club Plaza lighting ceremony began with one man, a ladder, and a modest string of 16 lights strung across the doorway of one building on Christmas Day in 1925.
A century later, it’s an iconic Kansas City tradition, complete with a high-energy ceremony, performances and thousands of light bulbs.
This year, the 96th annual Plaza Lighting Ceremony will take place from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 27, kicking off the holiday season in Kansas City.
The 2025 Plaza lighting ceremony
The event, held at the intersection of Nichols Road and Pennsylvania Avenue, is free and open to the public. Members of the Kansas City Current will flip the switch to light up the famed Country Club Plaza at approximately 7:55 p.m., followed by a fireworks display. The event will be broadcast live on KMBC.
The ceremony will also feature performances by DJ Kirby, Isaac Cages, Ben Gulley, Quixotic, Sound Proof from KC A Cappella, Vocalocity, and Monica’s School of Dance. The KC Repertory Theatre’s Gary Neal Johnson will present a special preview of their iconic production, “A Christmas Carol.”
The ceremony, a local tradition for 96 years, span 15 blocks of the Spanish-inspired shopping district, with thousands of jewel-colored lights highlighting every dome, tower and window. The lights will be on daily from 5 p.m. to 3 a.m. through Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, with all Plaza parking garages open and accessible throughout the season.
History of KC’s Thanksgiving tradition
In 1930, the Plaza hosted its first lighting ceremony and has continued to do so every year since on Thanksgiving Day in Kansas City, except 1973 when President Richard Nixon asked for the discontinuation of lights that year to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil.
Then in 2020, due to the pandemic, the event was a broadcast event only and officials discouraged large groups from assembling.
While the Kansas City Star’s archives do not have pictures from those early days, there are plenty of photographs to share through the years of the ceremony as tens of thousands of people join in the celebration as the switch is flipped to illuminate hundreds of lights outlining the Plaza’s Spanish-style architecture against a dramatic background of fireworks.
Watch the video slideshow to see the lighting ceremonies through the decades.
