The Parade Turns 41 This Year. The Zoo's Light Show Turns Five. Both Open the Same Night.

Nobody at Downtown Billings Alliance and nobody running Holiday Nights sat down together and picked November 27. But that's the date both landed on for 2026, and it means Billings residents get one night where the city's two biggest holiday kickoffs happen at the exact same time, a few miles apart, built on two completely different models.

The 41st annual Holiday Parade steps off downtown that Friday evening, free to watch, funded and organized through Downtown Billings, the same alliance that runs Alive After 5 and HarvestFest. Over 60 floats move through downtown streets and the whole thing wraps with Santa's arrival, a closing beat that's been part of the tradition for decades. That same night, several miles south on Shiloh Road, Holiday Nights opens its fifth season at ZooMontana, and for the first time this year, every single night of that six-week run has its own individual ticket price.

What's actually happening at the parade

The parade is the older, simpler half of the collision. It's free, it's outdoors, it's run by the same nonprofit business alliance that organizes downtown's summer concert series and fall festival, and it hasn't needed to reinvent itself to stay relevant. Sixty-plus floats and a Santa finale is roughly the same shape the event has taken for years. There's no ticket tier to choose, no date-based pricing to check before you go. You show up, you stand on a sidewalk, you watch it go by.

A few miles away, a very different kind of season opener

Holiday Nights didn't exist in its current walk-through form until 2022. Before that, ZooMontana ran a drive-thru light display. The walk-through version launched with over 10 million lights that first year, run not by the zoo itself but by a private vendor that contracts with ZooMontana to build and staff the display each winter. By its second season, in 2023, the show had grown enough that USA Today named it one of the top 10 zoo light displays in the country.

For 2026, the operator lists more than 15 million lights across the grounds, with the event running November 27 through December 31. Hours are 5 to 9 p.m. most nights, stretching to 10 p.m. on December 22 and 23. The schedule is Thursday through Sunday for the first two and a half weeks, then nightly from December 16 through the end of the month, with the display closed December 24.

Free versus ticketed isn't the only difference

The more interesting split isn't just that one event costs money and the other doesn't. It's that the paid one has spent four seasons adjusting its price structure in response to how people actually reacted, while the free one has never had to.

In 2023, after its first season drew complaints that the pricing had shut people out, the operator lowered admission and introduced new ticket packages. By 2025, the show had settled into a single surge weekend, December 21 through 23, when a child's ticket ran $17 and an adult's $27, compared to $15 and $25 the rest of the season. For 2026, that one surge weekend has been replaced by something broader: every date in the run now carries its own price, described on the event's site as "pick your date, pick your price." What started as a flat admission fee in 2022 has become a fully dynamic pricing model by year five, three rounds of adjustment in four years.

Here's how the two traditions compare heading into this season:

The downtown side of that table hasn't changed shape in years. The zoo side has changed shape every single season since it started.

What a night inside Holiday Nights actually feels like hasn't changed as much as the pricing has. Describing an earlier season, event director Janese Carstens put the visit at:

"About 45 to 50 minutes for people to go around, have a beverage, go into the pavilion for some food and drink, do the hidden holiday hunt, which is geared towards grade school age."

That's still roughly the pace you're buying into this year, just with a bigger footprint and a more complicated ticket to book in advance.

What's new inside the display this year

A handful of additions separate the 2026 run from prior seasons:

• TDS Winter Wonderland — a new blue-and-white walkthrough section built around water features, sponsored by TDS Fiber, the event's presenting sponsor.
• The 50-Foot Digital Christmas Tree — a returning centerpiece display, one of the show's most photographed spots.
• Low Sensory Nights — new for 2026, offered December 7 and December 16, aimed at guests who want a quieter, lower-stimulation version of the walk.
• Christmas Night hours — the display is now listed as open 5 to 9 p.m. on December 25 itself.
• Wagon rides run $5 per person per ride, and parking is $10 per vehicle on standard nights, rising to $15 to $20 during surge pricing windows.

The free tradition hasn't needed any of that

Downtown's version of the season stays close to what it's always been. The Holiday Stroll and ArtWalk lands on First Friday in December, this year December 4, and pairs roughly 40 galleries, studios, and downtown storefronts with extended shopping hours, live music, and free photos with Santa, typically set up in the Northern Hotel lobby. Last December's stroll was billed as the 24th annual run of the tradition, which puts this year's edition at or near a quarter century old. Nothing about that event has needed a pricing tier or a sponsor-branded new wing. It's free because the alliance that runs it has kept it free since it started, full stop.

So which night do you actually go

The honest answer is that the collision only matters once. The parade happens exactly one evening, November 27, and so does the opening night of Holiday Nights. Everything downstream from there is flexible. The Holiday Stroll doesn't happen again until December 4, and Holiday Nights runs nightly for most of December, so there's no reason to treat opening night as your only shot at the lights. If you want both traditions this year, the parade on the 27th is the one with a single showtime. The zoo's display has five and a half weeks of dates to pick from, now each priced a little differently depending on which one you choose.

That's really what's changed in five years. The free half of the season still runs on one clock. The ticketed half now runs on thirty-some different ones, one for every night on the calendar.

If you're also curious what's opening on the retail and restaurant side of the West End this year, our recent look at the West End's dining gap covers what's landed near Shiloh Crossing and King Avenue in 2026.

Heidi Brosovich and the Brosovich Real Estate Team spend as much time tracking what's happening in Billings neighborhoods as they do tracking what's for sale in them. If you're weighing a move to a part of town you're still getting to know, whether that's ahead of the holidays or well into next year, request a free home valuation and let's talk about what your options actually look like.