Ally Pally fireworks 2026: Friday out, Sunday in, 7-8 Nov

The Alexandra Palace Fireworks and Drone Festival runs on Saturday 7 and Sunday 8 November 2026, and for the first time in years there is no Friday night. The Palace’s own event page puts it bluntly: “Goodbye Friday, hello Sunday!” (Alexandra Palace).

Gates open at 16:00 on both days. The two displays are at different times: 8pm on the Saturday and 6pm on the Sunday. Last entry is 8.05pm on the Saturday and 6.05pm on the Sunday, so the gate shuts five minutes after the fireworks start and there is no arriving late (fireworks.london, the event’s own site, and the Palace’s ticket pages on DICE).

Tickets are already on sale, not merely on presale. The Palace’s own seller, DICE, has had both nights live since 12:00 on Wednesday 2 September, and Ticketmaster separately lists a general on-sale of 12:00 on Friday 4 September (Ticketmaster).

Bonfire night itself falls on Thursday 5 November 2026, two days before the first display.

What is confirmed on 3 September 2026

Why Friday was cut

This was a board decision, and the reasoning is on the record. A report to Haringey’s statutory advisory and consultative committees on 18 June 2026, written by the Palace’s Director of Events and Festivals, says the event “has traditionally taken place on a Friday and Saturday during the first weekend of November” and that “following a recent review, the Board approved a revised delivery model, moving to a Saturday and Sunday format” (Alexandra Palace Outdoor Events, 18 June 2026).

Two things in that report matter if you are choosing a night.

• The change is “intended to increase family attendance through the introduction of an earlier, reduced capacity Sunday display”.
• “Historically, the Saturday event has consistently sold out, with stronger demand than Friday.”

So Sunday is deliberately the smaller, earlier, calmer night, and Saturday is the one that goes first. The same report gives the scale: the festival draws “up to 45,000 attendees per night”.

Tickets

The £10.50 is not an entry price

Every listing site is running the “from £10.50” headline, and comparing it with last year’s advertised “tickets from £14” for the 2025 Halloween Spooktacular (Alexandra Palace, 2025). That comparison is wrong, and the organiser says so itself. The machine-readable summary the event publishes on its own site puts it plainly: “The GBP 10.50 early bird price is the ticket price for an 11-15 year old child including fees. It is not a general admission price” (fireworks.london).

Here is the actual table, read off the Palace’s own seller on the evening of Wednesday 3 September, a day after tickets opened.

Three things fall out of that table, and none of them is in the marketing.

• The family night costs more per adult than the party night. Sunday is billed as the calmer, cheaper, family option, but its adult ticket had already moved to a second release at £18 while Saturday’s was still on first release at £16.50. The saving on Sunday is entirely in the children: under-10s go free there and cost £6.50 on the Saturday.
• The early bird adult price has already gone on both nights. Neither adult ticket is still in the early bird tier. If you signed up for the presale expecting the cheapest adult seat, one day was the window.
• Every accessible ticket for both nights was already sold out, one day after they went on sale. That is six ticket types, gone. The accessible ticket includes a free companion over 21 and a place on the viewing platform, and it requires a proof of eligibility form within 10 days of purchase.

Children’s tickets cannot be bought on their own: the seller requires an adult or adult accessible ticket in the same order. The limit is six tickets per person.

How the tickets work

Worth knowing before you buy, because it is not a normal e-ticket.

• Tickets are DICE app tickets. You activate a unique QR code in the app on the day, usually about two hours before, and one phone can show a whole group’s tickets at the door.
• Nothing bought from a resale site will get you in. DICE states that a ticket from a third-party resale site “will be rejected at the door”. If you cannot go, the wait list resells it at face value and you are refunded only if it sells.
• Your ticket does not include everything. The German Bier Festival in the Great Hall, the ice rink, the Summit and, on the Sunday, the premium viewing area are all separate add-on tickets.
• Sales close during the event, at 21:00 on the Saturday and 20:00 on the Sunday.

On the night

From the seller’s own FAQ, which is the only place several of these appear.

• The site is cashless. Bring a card or phone.
• No cloakroom, and large bags are not allowed in. Bag checks and searches on arrival. Chairs and camping equipment are banned.
• No sparklers. Sparklers, fireworks and drones are all on the prohibited list.
• It goes ahead in the rain. The festival runs “come rain or shine”; only severe weather affecting safety would change that.
• Blue Badge parking exists but is strictly limited, and only by arrangement in advance with the Palace’s visitor services team at access@alexandrapalace.com. You have to show the booking confirmation to get into the car park.
• Gates are busiest in the hour before the display, 7pm to 8pm on the Saturday and 5pm to 6pm on the Sunday.

What is actually on the site

The 2026 line-up has not been announced. The 2025 programme is the best guide to the shape of the night, and the Palace’s own description of it listed a bonfire in the lower field, a funfair, ice discos, a bierkeller in the Great Hall with oompah and tribute acts, DJs at the StrEATlife area, and “over fifty food trucks and bars”. The Haringey committee report describes the same components for 2026: “fireworks, a synchronised drone show and a broader festival offer including bier festival, bonfire, funfair, StrEATlife catering concessions and live entertainment”.

Treat the 2025 acts as history, not a line-up. None of them has been re-announced.

Roads and parking: what to expect

The June report is explicit that “operational impacts are yet to be confirmed but will be communicated in advance”, so there is no 2026 traffic order yet. Haringey published the 2025 one on 29 October, nine days before the event, so expect the 2026 detail in the last week of October.

What happened in 2025 is a reliable template, because the closures are built around the same site and the same exits. From Haringey’s temporary traffic order (TTMO 143):

That one-hour post-display closure is the useful one, because it exists to clear the crowd the moment the fireworks end. In 2025 it ran 21:20 to 22:20 on the Friday and 20:20 to 21:20 on the Saturday, an hour apart on the two nights and about twenty minutes after each display is understood to have started. Set the same twenty-minute gap against this year’s confirmed 8pm and 6pm starts and the equivalent windows would fall at roughly 20:20 on the Saturday and 18:20 on the Sunday. That is arithmetic off last year’s order, not a published 2026 time. The 2026 order will give the real ones, and the signs on the street settle it.

Parking was suspended from 14:00 Thursday to 15:00 Sunday on The Avenue N10, Alexandra Park Road, Newland Road and Nightingale Lane, and on event evenings on Bedford Road, Buckingham Road, Palace Gates Road, Station Road and Park Road. Residents of nine roads, including Priory Avenue, Redston Road and Park Avenue North, were posted access permits valid 16:00 to 23:00 (Haringey Council, 28 October 2025).

The council contradicted its own traffic order

Worth knowing before you trust a single page. For Bedford Road in 2025, Haringey’s news article said the closure ran “4pm to Midnight” on the Friday and “2pm to midnight” on the Saturday. Its own legal traffic order for the same road said 16:00 to 23:00 on the Friday and 15:00 to 23:00 on the Saturday. The start time differs by an hour on the Saturday and the finish differs by an hour on both nights. The traffic order is the instrument that is actually enforced, so read that one, and read the signs on the street.

Do not plan to park at the Palace

Alexandra Palace’s travel page states plainly that “our outdoor events typically require us to close our car parks” (Alexandra Palace). In 2025 the car parks were shut from 14:00 Thursday to 15:00 Sunday. Normal tariffs, for what it is worth on a non-event day, are free for 30 minutes then £2.20 an hour, seven days a week, with Blue Badge holders exempt if they scan the badge at the machine.

Street parking around the park is suspended over the closure window, and much of the surrounding area is inside a controlled parking zone. Muswell Hill’s zone runs Monday to Sunday, which catches people out on a Sunday night display. Our parking in Crouch End page has the zone hours and tariffs.

Getting there

Alexandra Palace station, at the Wood Green gate of the park, is on the Great Northern line direct from Moorgate and King’s Cross. Wood Green on the Piccadilly line is the nearest Tube. The W3 bus was diverted for the whole weekend in 2025 and the 184 was diverted on both event evenings, so neither is a reliable last mile on the night.

Check the Crouch End roadworks and travel page before you set off, and see things to do in Crouch End for the rest of the area.

The fireworks is the first of the Palace’s three big winter draws. The ice rink and the theatre’s Christmas run follow, on our Christmas at Ally Pally page, and the World Darts Championship takes over the Great Hall from 11 December, with a public ticket ballot that closes on 14 September.

We will update this page when the 2026 programme and traffic order are published. On the evidence of last year, expect the traffic order in the last week of October.

Sources checked on 3 September 2026

• Fireworks and Drone Festival, Alexandra Palace for the 7 and 8 November dates, the 16:00 gates, the “Goodbye Friday, hello Sunday” line and the Sunday under-10s offer.
• fireworks.london, the event’s own site summary, for the 8pm Saturday and 6pm Sunday display times, the venue postcode N22 7AY, the presale opening at 12pm on Wednesday 2 September, and the statement that the £10.50 early bird price is an 11-15 child ticket including fees and “is not a general admission price”.
• The Palace’s ticket pages on DICE, its own seller, for the full price table, the tier each ticket sits in, the sold-out status of all six accessible tickets, the six-ticket limit, the requirement that a child ticket be bought with an adult one, the sale end times of 21:00 and 20:00, and the FAQ answers on gates and last entry, the cashless site, bags and chairs, sparklers, the wet-weather policy, the Bier Festival, ice rink, Summit and premium viewing add-ons, resale rejection at the door and Blue Badge parking by arrangement.
• Alexandra Palace outdoor events report, 18 June 2026 for the board’s decision to move to a Saturday and Sunday format, the reasoning, the “up to 45,000 attendees per night” figure and the statement that operational impacts are yet to be confirmed.
• Haringey temporary traffic order TTMO 143, made 29 October 2025 and Haringey Council, 28 October 2025 for last year’s road closures, parking suspensions, resident permit roads, park gate closures, bus diversions and the noise reporting line.
• Car parking and how to get here, Alexandra Palace, for the tariffs, the Blue Badge exemption, the stations and buses, and the statement that outdoor events typically require the car parks to close.