Christmas Lights: Marlow 19 Nov, Wycombe Not Yet Set

Two towns in this district switch their Christmas lights on with a proper event, and as of 5 September 2026 only one of them has named a date.

Marlow is confirmed: Thursday 19 November 2026. Marlow Town Council has it on its own Christmas lights page, with the line “more details coming soon”, so the date is firm and the programme is not.

High Wycombe is not confirmed. The switch-on is run by HWBIDCo, the town centre business improvement district, and neither its website nor MyWycombe.com had published anything about Christmas 2026 when we checked. The most recent news item on either site was dated 31 July 2026.

Marlow: Thursday 19 November 2026

The event runs on Marlow High Street. Marlow Town Council has published the date; the times, the guest and the entertainment line-up have not been released.

What the council’s write-up of the 2025 event tells you about the shape of it: the switch-on happened on Thursday 20 November 2025, the Mayor of Marlow and a compere led the countdown from the top of a double-decker bus, and the lights themselves were switched on by a guest, in that year the BBC Breakfast weather presenter Carol Kirkwood. It draws a large crowd into the High Street on a weekday evening.

The 2026 date is a Thursday again, and it is the third Thursday of November rather than the fourth, so it lands a week earlier in the month than 2025 did.

The other Marlow festive dates

Marlow & District Chamber of Commerce holds its annual late night shopping evening on Thursday 3 December 2026, when the High Street shops open late, stalls go up in the road and local school children sing carols. That is confirmed on Visit Marlow’s event listing.

Marlow’s other big December fixture, Santa’s Fun Run, is on Sunday 6 December 2026 from Higginson Park. Both the organisers and Marlow Town Council’s road closure page carry that date.

High Wycombe: what to expect, and when the date should land

The town centre switch-on is a free, all-day street event rather than an evening ceremony, and it is one of the two biggest days of HWBIDCo’s year. The BID says it lifts town centre footfall by roughly 700% against an average day.

Here is what the last two events looked like, from the organisers’ own material:

Both years ran the same format: two live music stages, children’s fairground rides, festive walkabout characters, Santa, carols, a craft and gift market and food and drink traders selling doughnuts, hot dogs, coffee, mulled wine and hot chocolate. In 2024 the guest characters were Bluey and Bingo; in 2025 it was Po from Kung Fu Panda.

The 2024 event was sponsored by Wycombe Wanderers FC.

The parking detail that has changed

MyWycombe’s page for the switch-on promises free parking on all council car parks on the day, and names Easton Street, the Wycombe Swan car park and Dovecot. It also warns that the offer does not include the Eden Shopping Centre car park.

Treat the Easton Street line as out of date. Easton Street multi-storey car park is permanently closed, and the council now points drivers to the Wycombe Swan and Railway Place instead. The site is allocated for housing in the draft Local Plan, so it is not coming back. Our parking guide has the current list of council car parks and their tariffs, including which ones charge on a Sunday.

When the date is likely to appear

On the two-year pattern, High Wycombe’s switch-on is a Saturday in the middle of November. If it holds, the candidate dates for 2026 are Saturday 14 or Saturday 21 November. HWBIDCo published its 2025 details in the autumn, so expect an announcement during October 2026. We will update this page the day it lands.

Getting into town

The switch-on closes streets in the middle of High Wycombe for the day, and Marlow’s does the same to the High Street for the evening. Neither council had published a traffic order for 2026 when we checked. Our roadworks and travel page tracks the live closures week by week, and the parking guide covers the car parks in both towns.

Sources

Checked on 5 September 2026: Marlow Town Council’s Christmas lights page for the 2026 date and the 2025 write-up; Visit Marlow for the late night shopping and Santa’s Fun Run listings; MyWycombe’s Christmas page and HWBIDCo’s switch-on page for the High Wycombe format, both of which were still carrying 2024 material; and HWBIDCo’s and MyWycombe’s news indexes for the negative check. The 15 November 2025 date and the 6.45pm switch-on time come from Red Kite Days’ listing for that event, as the organisers’ own 2025 page is no longer online.