The 2026 Holiday Parade of Lights, a downtown tradition for more than two decades, has been canceled by the Rotary Club of Naperville.
The group was to receive $22,300 in funding through Naperville’s Special Events and Community Arts Commission, but notified the city that it no longer needed the money because they were ending the event traditionally held the Friday night after Thanksgiving, according to a city staff report.
“We were told that the organization decided to cancel the 2026 Holiday Parade of Lights due to the high cost of producing the event relative to its (financial) return,” city spokesperson Linda LaCloche said. No other information was provided, she said.
Rotary Club officials were not immediately available for comment and its parade website, napervillerotaryparade.org, has not been updated for 2026.
With the parade no longer happening, the SECA money will return to the city’s food and beverage tax fund unless otherwise allocated to another event or events by the council. The grant money comes from the 1% tax collected on the sale of food and beverages in the city and is to be used for local social and artistic events.
“(The cancellation) came as a shock to me, especially since SECA funded a lot of their city services request,” said former Naperville City Councilwoman Allison Longenbaugh, who posted about the parade’s demise on her Facebook page, “The Rundown with Allison Longenbaugh.”
Before making the decision, the club had requested $26,773 in SECA money.
Mayor Scott Wehrli said he was “disappointed, but not surprised” by the decision.
“I know the attendance is not what it used to be a decade ago,” Wehrli said. “The attendance is a lot smaller, and I think the cold weather (on some of the nights it was held) also contributed to it. I think sometimes events like these, they need an opportunity for reset or maybe a new type of event to bring people together.”
Wehrli said that in his assessment, there were times when it seemed like there were more people participating in the parade than watching it.
“(This past year), I think we did have probably more in attendance than 2024,” he said. “However, there were stretches along the parade route where there was nobody on the street.”
Katie Wood, executive director for Downtown Naperville Alliance, said that while attendance had declined over the years, the “magic” of the event remained. They are “disappointed” the Rotary Club canceled the parade but remained grateful to it and the organizations before it for helming the parade for years.
“We’re saddened by their decision but remain open to whatever may come next, with the shared goal of preserving the warmth and community spirit that Naperville loves,” Wood said.
When the parade debuted in 2003, it was a joint effort between the Downtown Naperville Alliance and Little Friends, a nonprofit that works with children and adults with autism and developmental disabilities. It was part of what was then known as Hometown Holiday weekend, which included ice sculpting, a puppet show, concerts and trolley rides.
Then known as the “Friends of Little Friends Hometown Holidays Parade,” it didn’t feature a lot of lights because it was held on a Sunday afternoon. A few years later, it became a morning event.
Since then, it has gone through a number of changes before becoming the Holiday Parade of Lights, a night-time tradition meant to serve as the official start of the holiday season in Naperville.
It was canceled twice in the past — in 2018 because of heavy rain and thunderstorms and in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Rotary became the parade’s organizer in 2021, with proceeds raised through entry fees and sponsorships distributed to charities supported by the nonprofit service club.
This is not the first Naperville event to have been canceled due to rising costs.
Naperville Salute, a Fourth of July celebration held annually at Naperville’s Rotary Hill, was called off last year. Organizers cited fundraising shortfalls as the cause for cancellation.
Organizers of the India Day Festival did the same thing, canceling the annual August event in 2025 due to increased expenses and reduced funding.
At the time, event founder and organizer Krishna Bansal said some of those rising costs were the result of new city-mandated security requirements, including rules that fencing surround the event perimeters, metal detectors be used at controlled entry points and only clear bags be allowed on festival grounds.
Naperville police Chief Jason Arres acknowledged that the rules, developed in the wake of criminal incidents occurring at parades around the country, were “something we’ve really been pushing towards for the past few years and are finally getting traction (on).”
Naperville police declined to comment on whether security requirements might have played a role in the Holiday Parade of Light’s cancellation.
Wehrli said he has been in contact with the Downtown Naperville Alliance about the possibility of creating a new holiday event and he plans on talking to other groups to generate some new ideas.
“I’m very anxious to see what the (Downtown Naperville Alliance) and where the merchants and the restaurants fall on this particular change,” he said, noting that parades come with significant road closures and parking restrictions that can cause problems for businesses.
“You’re disrupting the downtown during a prime shopping day,” Wehrli said. “Will (business owners) look at this as a potential positive to increase and keep their foot traffic and their reservations and their shopping traffic going later into the evening, or will they be looking at it as something that would be a negative?”
