On Saturday night we headed over to Canary Wharf  on the Elizabeth Line for the Canary Wharf Winter Lights Festival. It’s something we’ve been meaning to visit for the last few years but it’s only on for a few days each year. There were over 20 light installations to see and we did so many steps visiting them all!

Canary Wharf Winter Lights Festival

The Canary Wharf Winter Lights Festival takes place at Canary Wharf in east London. We took the Elizabeth Line to Canary Wharf station emerging from the station into daylight. The lights were switched on until5 pm but there were a couple of other installations we wanted to see.

We picked up a paper map from one of the attendants and planned our walking route around Canary Wharf.

There were over 20 light installations to see as part of the Canary Wharf Winter Lights Festival, alongside the installations which can be seen all year round, these included the famous Traffic Light Tree and the Crossrail Tunnel.

We don’t often go to Canary Wharf, unless it’s to visit the Museum of London, so the kids were excited to explore. In case you haven’t been before, Canary Wharf was re-developed in the 1980s from the old docks, and is one of the main business districts of London. As well as lots of blank, dull office blocks, there are restaurants, cafes, shops and lots of places to walk and explore.

After a brief look at the map we were off, along with our dog. We thought it would be a great place for the whole family and the Elizabeth Line was dog-friendly so we took him too. We spent about 4 hours walking around and saw nearly all of the lights. It started off really quiet but by the end of the evening there were so many people we could barely see the lights!

We all liked different lights but our favourite was the Floating Earth which looked stunning against the backdrop of the Canary Wharf buildings.

Would we visit the Canary Wharf Winter Lights Festival again? Definitely! It’s great to get outside in January and we love seeing winter lights, we have visited both the Lap of Lights at Silverstone and Christmas at Kew. However I would recommend if you’re taking kids (or a dog) to visit during the week as Saturday night was really busy and it was difficult to see some of the installations.

Other winter light installations:

Wembley Park Christmas Lights

RHS GLOW at Wisley

Christmas at Kew

Lap of Lights at Silverstone