On a Thursday last December, Jennifer Young and her helper Joy Ramsey parked at the Center for Progress and Justice and spent the day filling paper bags with sand. They made 23 dozen farolitos that day. The Santa Fe New Mexican reported that the work usually starts about two months before Christmas Eve. Two months before December 24, 2026 was late October. So for this year's walk, the sand is already going into bags.
The City runs on a later schedule. In 2025 the City of Santa Fe announced its Farolito Walk closures and shuttle on December 19, five days before Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve 2026 falls on a Thursday. For anyone with a house, a gallery or guests on the Eastside, the evening has two parts. The farolitos can be ordered this month, and in recent years the City's street rules have come out during the week before Christmas.
Most of the road's light comes from one business
Young owns Santa Fe Farolitos, and the New Mexican reported that she has supplied the walk for more than 15 years. Her last count was more than 3,500 lanterns along the road, ordered by about 30 gallery clients. The largest single order came from Nedra Matteucci: 140 dozen for Morning Star Gallery and her home nearby on Canyon Road.
The business started in Eldorado. Young began teaching at The Children's School in 2008, when the preschool held an annual farolito-making fundraiser. She bought the school in 2010 and kept the fundraiser going. When the school closed seven years later, she carried on with the farolitos as her own business. She told the paper, "What keeps me going is that there's nobody else that will do it."
That shapes how the night is built. The galleries order the bags weeks ahead and set them out in the morning. The City's job comes after dark, when it closes the streets and handles the crowd that comes to see them.
What a household can lock in now
The Santa Fe Farolitos site was updated in late October and is taking residential orders through its online shop. Its options split by type of customer:
- Residential delivery: $28 per dozen. Each bag holds 16 ounces of sand and a 15-hour candle, and delivery runs on Christmas Eve from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The listing says delivery can be scheduled before Christmas Eve if needed.
- Delivery, setup and lighting: $38 per dozen. Setup runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and lighting from 3 to 5:30 p.m. This tier is marked "Gallery & Commercial Only."
- Delivery, setup, lighting and Christmas Day cleanup: $50 per dozen, also gallery and commercial only.
- LED lights: the shop also offers weather-resistant LED lights.
For questions about delivery area, the business lists 505-435-1497. At home, that means the bags show up by early afternoon and a household lines and lights them itself. On the commercial side, the crews are still lighting candles when people start walking.
How the City's half has moved
The City's logistics have been similar from year to year, with one clear change: the evening starts earlier than it used to.
| Christmas Eve | Walk hours | Resident and business access | Shuttle |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 6 to 9 p.m. | 5:30 to 6 p.m. | Free, South Capitol Rail Runner Station to the Visitor Center at Old Santa Fe Trail and Paseo de Peralta, last run 9:30 p.m. |
| 2023 | Not listed in the City's December 20 newsletter | Not listed | Free, with parking at South Capitol Station |
| 2024 | Around sunset to about 9 p.m. | Closures from 5 p.m., entry 5 to 6 p.m. "if pedestrian traffic permits" | Free from 4:45 p.m., same route, last run 9:30 p.m. |
| 2025 | 5 to 9 p.m. | 5:30 to 6 p.m., emergency vehicles only after 5 p.m. until 10 p.m. | Free, 4:45 to 9:15 p.m., South Capitol Train Station to the Visitor Center / Capitol Parking Lot |
In 2022, the City's notice said the walk was "held by the Canyon Road Association" and started at 6 p.m. In 2024, the New Mexican's preview quoted Deputy Chief Ben Valdez saying police would start closing Canyon Road, Acequia Madre and parts of Paseo de Peralta at 5 p.m. By 2025 the City's own release listed the walk itself at 5 p.m. That is an hour earlier than the 2022 start, and the 2025 release put its emergency-only restriction at 5 p.m. as well.
The 2025 wording, line by line
The 2025 City release has the most detail on access of any recent notice. It said police and fire personnel would let only residents and business owners in from 5:30 to 6 p.m. It also said that after 5 p.m., access inside the closure area would be limited to emergency vehicles until 10 p.m. It said passes would not be issued. It asked residents and business owners to make sure guests and employees arrived before 6 p.m., and it asked businesses to schedule deliveries before 4:30 p.m.
Taken as written, the earliest cutoff in that release is 5 p.m. A household planning on last year's pattern would want dinner guests parked before then, rather than counting on the 5:30 window. With no passes, a guest who arrives late usually comes in on foot or on the free shuttle, and the release said streets in the area would be closed to parking as well as traffic.
The two schedules also overlap at the door. Santa Fe Farolitos finishes residential delivery by 1 p.m., well before the City's 4:30 delivery cutoff. The commercial lighting window runs to 5:30 p.m., so on the gallery blocks the candles are still being lit as the street closes around them.
The bonfires need their own notice
The farolitos are paper, sand and a candle. The luminarias, the small piñon bonfires that Visit Canyon Road describes along the road, are actual open fires. Under the City's Fire Code, open burning without a Santa Fe Fire Department permit is normally prohibited. Each Christmas Eve, the chief has issued a one-night exception.
In 2025, Fire Chief Brian Moya and Fire Marshal Geronimo Griego granted citywide amnesty for farolito and luminaria burning from sundown on December 24 to dawn on December 25. The release went out December 17. The City issued the same exception in 2022, and the New Mexican reported it again in 2024. The amnesty covers one night and is announced separately each year. This is general information, not legal advice. For anything beyond candles in bags, the Santa Fe Fire Department's fire prevention page is the place to confirm the current rules.
The fires matter to how the night goes. In the New Mexican's 2024 coverage, milder temperatures drew a larger crowd than the year before. Businesses still came out with hot chocolate, cider and bonfires. Tesoros Trading Company served hot chocolate to people walking by. Judith Salazar Gonzales, who grew up on Canyon Road, and Patrick Gonzales lit the farolitos outside their business and across the street. "We're one of the last families on this road," she told the paper. In the 2024 preview, Maggie Fine of the Canyon Road Summer Walks said she was working with the longtime owners of the Cinco Flores lot, across from El Farol, on fire pits, food and music.
A working calendar for December 2026
Here is the evening laid out on the 2025 times, which the City sets fresh each year.
- Mid-November: place the farolito order. Assembly has been underway since late October.
- Around December 17: watch for the Fire Department's Christmas Eve burning notice, which went out on this date in 2025.
- Around December 19: watch for the City's walk release with closure times and the shuttle route, which went out on this date in 2025.
- Thursday, December 24, morning to 1 p.m.: residential farolito delivery window.
- By 4:30 p.m.: the 2025 cutoff for business deliveries.
- By 5 p.m.: guests parked inside the closure area, going by the earliest cutoff in the 2025 release.
- From 4:45 p.m.: the 2025 free shuttle ran from South Capitol Train Station to the Visitor Center / Capitol Parking Lot, which works for any guest who arrives later.
Visit Canyon Road says the walk begins at sundown and spreads onto Acequia Madre and other Eastside streets. Some businesses stay open on Christmas Eve, and many are closed.
If you're hosting on the Eastside this Christmas Eve and want to compare notes on timing, access or the walk itself, Ayden Gramm lives and works in this part of Santa Fe and is glad to talk it through. Schedule a Consultation, and we'll go over the City's notices together once they're posted.
