Canary Wharf’s award-winning Winter Lights festival returns this month for its landmark tenth edition, running daily from 5-10pm from Tuesday 20th to Saturday 31st January.
To mark a decade of dazzling displays, this year’s Winter Lights will transform the neighbourhood with its most ambitious lineup yet. The trail features 16 installations, including six new commissions.
With brand-new theme DREAMSCAPE, visitors will be transported into ethereal, surreal and otherworldly realms. In addition to the new temporary installations, the trail will also highlight nine of Canary Wharf’s iconic permanent light artworks, many collected from previous editions of the festival.
The free-to-attend event will take visitors on a journey of immersion and discovery, featuring large-scale artworks created by returning Winter Lights artists as well as new contributors from the UK and around the world.
Instrumental in putting light art on London’s cultural map, Winter Lights has grown into one of London’s most celebrated cultural events, drawing visitors from across the UK and beyond.
To celebrate the tenth edition of the festival, Canary Wharf has commissioned artist Anna Lomax to design a limited-edition print, available to purchase in-store at the charitable organisation Circle Collective. Lomax has also been commissioned to create a triptych of installations titled For Ever and Ever and Ever, which will be exhibited throughout the retail malls.
The trail invites visitors to explore surreal illusions, kinetic sculptures, celestial landscapes and interactive pieces that blur the boundary between reality and imagination.
Whether it’s mind-bending optical illusions, digital blooms or captivating kinetic artwork, Winter Lights is bringing a striking combination of installations to Canary Wharf.
Highlights include a monumental hand formed from floating light voxels by Patrice LaCroix, an astronomical installation that brings the solar system into the treetops by Artistic and Janis Petersons, and a vast water-screen projection that turns mist into shimmering holograms by Limbic Cinema.
Visitors can experience the festival for free each evening, with the district’s cafés, restaurants and bars open throughout. For a full day out, Winter Lights can be combined with a trip to the popular ice rink in Canada Square Park and immersive festive bar, The Winter Club, in Wood Wharf.
Alongside Canary Wharf’s bars, cafés and restaurants, Winter Lights Bites food stands will pop up across Montgomery Square, Jubilee Park and Union Square, serving global street food from wood-fired pizzas and jerk chicken to Moroccan dishes, plus sweet treats including crêpes and crumble.
Visitors can take advantage of Off Peak Offers from Monday to Wednesday, including 20% off food from Winter Lights Bites traders, free entry to the Ice Bar when purchasing a drink at The Winter Club, as well as three hours of free parking when you spend £10 at Waitrose.
Pippa Dale, Associate-Director Arts & Events at Canary Wharf Group comments:
“Our tenth edition of Winter Lights marks a milestone moment. Over the past decade, the experience has grown and brightened into the capital’s most ambitious light art festival, with this year’s DREAMSCAPE theme representing our boldest vision yet. This year’s artists have created an extraordinary world of illusion, reflection and playfulness, transforming the dark nights of January into a celebration of creativity. We can’t wait to welcome visitors to what will be our most immersive and transportive edition yet.”
The festival has been designed with accessibility in mind, ensuring the artworks can be enjoyed by all.
Maps are available on the Canary Wharf website, via the Canary Wharf app and from event stewards throughout the festival.
For more information on the upcoming Winter Lights festival visit canarywharf.com/winter-lights. Visitors are encouraged to attend on weeknights, as the weekends get extremely busy.
Line-up
1. Out of Body Experience by Alaa Minawi (Netherlands, Palestine, Lebanon)
Riverside
A mesmerising installation celebrating dance as a universal human expression. Abstracted, shifting silhouettes of dancing figures evoke the dreamlike sensation of slipping beyond one’s physical form into an ‘out of body’ release.
2. Lacto-Reacto-Light by Jack Wimperis (UK)
Riverside
A large-scale interactive light sculpture made entirely of recycled plastic milk bottles. A motion sensor tracks visitors’ movements, transforming them into glowing patterns, flickers and flame-like animations across the array.
3. FloWeЯ PoWeЯ by Aerosculpture/ Jean-Pierre David and Christian Thellier(France)
Westferry Circus
Harnessing the phenomenon of persistence of vision, this installation creates hypnotic spirals and flashes of colour that bloom like digital flowers. A hallucinatory celebration of peace, love and luminous beauty.
4. In Bloom by Kumquat Lab (UK)
Wren Landing
Inspired by flower pollination, ten glowing spheres act as ‘musical blooms’. Touching one triggers a note, transforming the natural dance of pollinators into a collaborative act of music-making and connection.
5. Trispheric Garden by REELIZE.STUDIO (Australia)
Cabot Square
Six shimmering illuminated obelisks encircle the fountain, each containing mirrored orbs that refract light into dreamlike ripples. Together they form a ‘dreaming pond’, dissolving the boundary between reality and imagination.
6. For Ever and Ever and Ever by Anna Lomax (UK)
Newly commissioned by CWG
Cabot, Canada & Jubilee Place
A triptych of works exploring repetition, reflection and colour. From towering neon loops to recycled-glass infinity lights and calm glowing monoliths, the trio creates a journey through shifting moods and surreal spaces.
7. Sol by Artistic/ Janis Petersons (Latvia)
Crossrail Place Roof Garden
A miniature solar system suspended among the treetops. This celestial installation brings planets into our world, inviting visitors to wander among them and reflect on harmony, creativity and connection.
8. Aether by Architecture Social Club (UK)
Montgomery Square
Created in collaboration with musician Max Cooper, Aether is a woven field of lights translating sound into moving patterns. Evolving like a dancer, it visualises music in space with hypnotic, phosphorescent beauty.
9. Blueprint by Studio Vertigo (UK)
Water Street
An ode to the DNA double helix, Blueprint uses real genetic data from the TLR7 gene, animating light and sound to make the hidden architecture of life both visible and audible in an almost dreamlike landscape. Sitting within a district home to more than 40 organisations working in life sciences and healthcare innovation, the installation connects the cutting-edge work in advanced therapies and genomic medicine taking place in Canary Wharf’s lab spaces with the public realm — uniting scientific discovery with human experience.
10. Hulahoop by Scale (France)
Union Square
A poetic, kinetic sculpture that blends light, movement and sound. The sweeping arcs of light mesmerise viewers, pulling them into a trance-like state where peripheral reality fades away.
11. Sanctuary by Ithaca (UK)
Newly commissioned by CWG
Union Square
A towering sculptural sanctuary of shifting light and sound. Visitors step inside to experience jewel-like tones, warm glows and meditative atmospheres; a peaceful refuge from the pace of urban life.
12. Un-Reel Access by Kappa/ Patrick and Kaori Jones (UK/Japan)
North Lane
A locked door with one glowing, unspooled corner invites the curious to imagine alternative paths beyond barriers. A metaphorical portal urging viewers to rethink the boundaries of possibility.
13. Colour Rush by Liz West (UK)
Co-commissioned by CWG, Illuminate Oldham and Light Night Wigan
East Lane
A kaleidoscopic octagonal light box inspired by vibrant ink drawings. Placed on a mirrored plinth, it multiplies colour and form, encouraging visitors to move around it and immerse themselves in shifting reflections.
Co-commissioned in partnership with Light Night Wigan and Illuminate Light Night Oldham
14. Manifestation by Marcus Lyall (UK)
Newly commissioned by CWG
West Lane
A 12m arc of light telling an ethereal narrative inspired by Victorian spiritualism. Laser-generated figures morph between abstraction and apparitions, recalling early experiments in ‘visual music’.
15. At the Hand by Patrice LaCroix (Canada)
Newly commissioned by CWG
Harbour Quay Gardens
A volumetric light sculpture forming a monumental hand made of floating light cubes. Visitors’ gestures animate the structure, creating a moment of reflection on the relationship between humans and technology.
16. Amplitudes by Limbic Cinema (UK)
Newly commissioned by CWG
Eden Dock
A large-scale water-screen projection where waveforms ripple like holograms across mist and wind. Paired with synchronised music, it creates a meditative fusion of science, nature and light.
