The Largest Lantern Festival in North America Is a Truly Dazzling Display — and It’s Coming to New York in Time for the Holidays

New York City is about to get a whole lot brighter.

This December, New York’s Citi Field will host the largest lantern festival in North America.

The event, known as the Hello Panda Festival, will take over some 700,000 square feet of space and entertain guests with a fully interactive and multisensory experience. It will also be a social media-ready affair with some 120 Instagrammable lantern exhibits containing more than 10 million handcrafted and hand-painted lights.

Beyond the light show, the event will also feature 60 international food vendors cooking up dishes from all over the globe, and cultural arts experiences splattered throughout the space. There will even be a holiday market available for those looking to do some last-minute shopping for their loved ones.

“Hello Panda’s mission is to not only give New Yorkers and visitors something they’ve never seen before but also deliver an experience they can’t find anywhere else,” Winston Wang, General Manager of CPAA North America, the organization putting on the event, said in a statement. “Our festival will offer a variety of immersive and social media moments that introduce guests to the artistry of lantern-making while bringing different communities together through food and culture.”

As for why the company chose Citi Field as the location, Heather Collamore, Vice President of Metropolitan Hospitality at Citi Field, explained it succinctly in the statement saying, “Citi Field is a place where people from all walks of life come together and share an amazing experience.” She added, “The Hello Panda Festival is a unique event that promotes cultural exchange while delighting the child in all of us.”

Guests interested in checking out the space and taking as many Instagram photos as they’d like can visit the lantern experience from Dec. 6, 2019 to Jan. 26, 2020. Tickets, which are available now, range from $22 – $28.