The Holiday Light Spectacular will return to the Marin County Fairgrounds in San Rafael for a second year, offering free nightly holiday activities from Nov. 27 through Jan. 3.

The event will run from 5 to 9 p.m., including holidays, with thousands of lights on display, free craft activities, and food and drinks, including hot chocolate, apple cider, churros and caramel apples, that will be available for purchase.

The Bartolini Gallery will an exhibit showcasing recent work by Marin Model Shop alumni whose work helped create creatures and characters for Industrial Light & Magic, a world-renowned motion picture visual effects studio once based in San Rafael.

Opening night will include a glow-in-the-dark juggler and face painting. Other events include a menorah lighting Dec. 12 and a string performance by the Maud Powell String Institute Dec. 18.

Left: People enter and exit a maze at the Holiday Light Spectacular. The illuminated display features over a thousand holiday lights. Right: A vintage firetruck handcrafted in 1956 by Marin County Firefighters at the Woodacre Station on display at the Marin County Fairgrounds in San Rafael, Calif., on Dec. 12, 2025. (George Alfaro/Bay City News)

Free holiday movies also will be shown at the Marin Center Showcase Theater, including “Hook” on Nov. 28, “Ghostbusters” on Dec. 19, and “James and the Giant Peach” and “The NeverEnding Story” on Dec. 26.

The fairgrounds are at 20 Avenue of the Flags in San Rafael. Visitors are encouraged to carpool or use public transportation. Marin Transit bus routes 35 and 49 serve the fairgrounds, while the SMART Marin Civic Center train station is a short walk to the fairgrounds.

In the event of lightning or high winds, events may be canceled. Updates can be found on the Marin County Holiday Light Spectacular website.

Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.