Everything you need to know before attending Leeds Light Night

I’ve talked before about attending Leeds Light Night in 2023, but this time I wanted this post to be more informative and not just full of pretty light photos (although there’s plenty of those, don’t worry!) If you’ve never been to a Light Night style event, it can be easy to decide it’s not something for you, or be worried about crowds, finding your way around and hidden costs. This post talks about the event, everything I’ve learnt from attending for at least five different years, and everything I think you need to know about Leeds Light Night, before you attend next year’s. I plan to share this post in the few weeks before next years so that people can get the most use out of it.

Leeds Light Night happens every year (apart from during Covid, which made sense!) and it’s usually around the same dates, the Wednesday and Thursday of the third week in October. This year’s was 22nd and 23rd, I fully expect last years to be 21st and 22nd (I’ll check back when it’s announced and see if I’m right!) There is absolutely no cost to attending, whatsoever, other than however much it costs for you to drive, get the bus or the train into the city normally. You can choose to spend money though, on different light up souvenirs, hot chocolate or street food from lots of stalls. We had a banging hot chocolate with cream and a toasted marshmallow on night one, outside The Tetley.

You can walk as far, or as little, as you like. The city is set into zones with some of them being really central (Station Zone is around the train station, Briggate Zone next to Trinity Leeds, and Millenium Square Zone is also really central. These always have some of the big hitters-the short video projected onto the Queens Hotel, and a different video projected onto Leeds Civic Hall. These tend to run for a few minutes usually with a five minute break in between, so they’re regular and you can just grab a good spot to stand and watch.

If you want to/are able to do more steps, there always things on at The Tetley, Leeds Dock and Royal Armouries Museum (South Bank Zone) as well as at and around Wellington Place (Wellington Place Zone) and even up as far as the University (University Zone). I never make it up to the University Zone, that walk can be too much for me.

Parking can be trickier during Light Night, as some roads are closed and the city is much busier than normal. We generally park in The Light or Trinity Leeds carpark, but this year we did Stourton Park and Ride both times and I found that much easier as a driver. There were plenty of parking spaces and the buses were frequent and cheap, at £3 return per adult-I couldn’t have parked in the city centre for £6 for the whole night.

It’s really worth having a proper look at the website before you go to Light Night. I found the ‘I’m Sorry’ exhibition, at East Street Arts, right at the bottom of the page for that zone, in the ‘extra things’ section. It ended up being one of my favourite bits of the night so I’m glad I looked for it, and walked a bit more out of the city to get to East Street Arts to see it.

Friends we were with didn’t fancy the queue to see the Spirograph 60th anniversary show inside Leeds City Museum, but decided to come with us anyway when I did. It was really good-I loved Spirograph as a child-and just shows that the queues can be worth it, especially when you’ve done your research and know you want to see the thing.

It’s very unlikely you’ll see everything in one night, so you’ll either need to be selective or plan to visit both nights. We usually do one night and are more selective, but I really enjoyed having more time this year and seeing 90% of what I wanted to see.

It can be very difficult to get a photo of something without people in it-so you just have to do your best, and remember that if people are shoving their children in front of something and taking photos for ages, unfortunately those children are going to get into other people’s shots. I think that’s acceptable for things like this (although I’m careful which photos I actually use!)

Often the things I’m less excited about are the best things to see. This year I really liked Beacon, inside St John’s Church, which I didn’t think would be my thing.

The last thing to remember is it’s a good idea to see as much as you can within a zone before moving on, because that way you don’t miss anything. I missed out on two things I wanted to see this year and whilst it’s not the end of the world, I’m sad I didn’t pay just a bit more attention to the map.