Grand Menorah Lighting

About This Event

Chicago's Grand Menorah Lighting puts a 31-foot, 18-foot-wide menorah in the middle of Daley Plaza every winter, right alongside Christkindlmarket's own stalls — live music, hot holiday snacks, and one of downtown's genuinely better free winter traditions rather than an afterthought tacked onto the Christmas display next door.

It dates to 1987, when Rabbi Meir Chai Benhiyoun came to Chicago with his wife to establish a Jewish community center in the city and started the lighting as a public, citywide event rather than a private ceremony. Nearly four decades later, he's still the one leading it, and it's drawn a Chicago mayor's attendance almost every year since.

Worth knowing: the city hasn't formally confirmed the exact 2026 date as of this writing, though recent years have landed the ceremony on the second night of Hanukkah, which points to Saturday, December 5, 2026 — the estimate on the card above. Treat it as a strong pattern-based guess, not a locked date, until it's formally announced.