Hammersmith Winter Festival is Sat 14 Nov, 10am to 4pm, free, with 100+ stalls. King Street and Bridge Avenue shut 4am to 10pm and nine bus routes divert.

Hammersmith Winter Festival is on Saturday 14 November 2026, 10am to 4pm. That date and those times come from Hammersmith and Fulham Council’s own events calendar, which listed the festival on 5 September 2026. Entry is free.

Updated 3 October: the council has now published the road closures and bus diversions for the day, and confirmed more than 100 stalls. Both are set out below.

Updated 12 October: trader applications for the council’s Christmas markets have now closed; no music line-up has been published yet.

This is the borough’s first Christmas market of the year, and for most people in Hammersmith it is the thing that starts the season. There is no separate Christmas lights switch-on ceremony in Hammersmith, which is the single most common misunderstanding about this event, and the evidence for that is set out below.

What is confirmed for 2026

The council’s calendar entry, rechecked on 12 October 2026, confirms:

  • Date: Saturday 14 November 2026
  • Time: 10.00am to 4.00pm
  • Venue: Lyric Square and King Street, Hammersmith, W6 0QL
  • Price: Free
  • Stalls: “more than 100 stalls offering gifts, crafts, food, drinks and more”, with shopping, street entertainment, live music and food

Trader applications for the council’s Christmas markets closed by 12 October; the stallholders themselves have not been named. No music line-up has been published.

Road closures and bus diversions on 14 November

The council’s listing sets out the traffic arrangements for the day:

  • King Street, including the cycle lane, is closed to all vehicles between the Gyratory and Bridge Avenue from 4am to 10pm.
  • Bridge Avenue is closed from 4am to 10pm.
  • Buses 110, 190, 267, H91, N9 and N11 divert via Hammersmith Broadway, Shepherds Bush Road, Goldhawk Road, Paddenswick Road and Dalling Road.
  • Buses 218, 306 and N266 divert via Hammersmith Broadway, Shepherds Bush Road, Goldhawk Road and Askew Road.
  • The 27 ends at Hammersmith bus station and does not serve King Street or Glenthorne Road.

The closure runs well beyond the festival’s opening hours, so anyone living or parked on that stretch of King Street should plan for an 18-hour day without vehicle access. The council points travellers to TfL’s journey planner.

What the festival normally involves

The council has not yet issued its 2026 preview, so the detail below is from its announcement of the 2025 festival, published on 4 November 2025. Treat it as the shape of the event rather than a promise about this year.

In 2025 the festival ran along King Street and in Lyric Square, from 10am to 4pm, with more than 100 stalls from small independent traders selling gifts, crafts, jewellery, home accessories, boutique fashion and art. There was a seasonal food quarter with outdoor seating, live music across three stages, street entertainers, Mr Bones’ puppet show, the Hammersmith Morris Men, and a visit from Father Christmas. The 2025 music line-up was The Satin Dollz, Brassbound, Kaiya Maxfield and Chris Harvey.

The council also ran the festival in 2023, so 2026 is at least its third recent year.

What is confirmed and what is not

There is no Christmas lights switch-on event in Hammersmith. If you are searching for one, you are looking for something the council does not run. The Winter Festival is the festive launch, and the lights simply go on without a countdown or a celebrity. We checked the council’s full events calendar for 20 October 2026 to 20 January 2027 and filtered it by its Christmas category: the only entries are this festival, the North End Road Christmas Market and the council’s Big Christmas Day Lunch for older residents.

Still to be announced for 2026, and expected in early November based on last year’s timing:

  • The trader list
  • The music line-up and stage positions
  • Whether Father Christmas is booked again

We will update this page when the council publishes its preview.

Getting there and parking

Hammersmith station is the obvious approach and is served by the Piccadilly, District, Circle and Hammersmith and City lines. Lyric Square is a two-minute walk from the station exit. Every station in the borough is in Zone 2.

Driving on the day is the harder option, because King Street is shut to vehicles from 4am to 10pm between the Gyratory and Bridge Avenue, which removes the kerbside parking along the festival stretch. If you do drive, check parking in Fulham and Hammersmith first: bank holidays aside, several central zones control seven days a week, and the emissions-banded rates run from £2.80 to £7.00 an hour with a £1 an hour diesel surcharge.

For the closure itself, and for anything else happening on the road network that weekend, see Fulham roadworks and travel. The council publishes a weekly Network Activity Bulletin that lists permitted works and event closures with start and end dates, and it is the most reliable warning of what will be shut.

The same weekend

The Fulham 10K runs the following morning, Sunday 15 November 2026, on closed roads around Eel Brook Common, Munster Road, Fulham Road and Parsons Green. If you are planning to drive across the borough that weekend, it is worth knowing both are happening. See our page on the Fulham 10K.

The Lyric Hammersmith’s pantomime, Cinderella, also opens on Saturday 14 November, the same day as the festival, in the theatre on the north side of Lyric Square. See pantomimes and Christmas shows.

Sources