Perth’s Christmas Switch-On Weekend Will Be Free Again, With Drone Show, Santa Run and Silent Disco in a Church
Three days of festive fun cost nothing to get in. Families say it's the one weekend they don't have to explain what a budget is.
Christmas lights in Perth, coming soon and free to enjoy. Photo: LoMit, “Piwna Street in Warsaw - christmas lights”, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Perth’s Christmas Lights Switch-On weekend will be free again this year, with three days of music, markets, a funfair, a Santa Run and a drone show to finish on the Sunday night.
“Free is my favourite price,” said a dad of four from Letham. “Christmas is expensive. Presents are expensive. Getting four children to agree on a film is expensive in other ways. So free lights and fireworks? I’ll take it.”
The weekend begins with a silent disco at St Paul’s Church on the Friday night. “Dancing in a church in silence with headphones on,” said one Perth teenager. “My gran says that’s how she remembers the 60s.”
On the Sunday, there’s Cakefest, the Christmas Parade and a lantern parade, followed by the drone show at 6pm. Families are advised to bring warm clothes, hot drinks and “a sense of wonder, which is also free”.
Some funfair rides will have a charge. The Christmas spirit, organisers say, will not.
The real story: Christmas Lights weekend (Perth and Kinross Council)
Letters to the Editor
The views expressed are those of the reader, and frankly that's on them.
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Four kids, free fireworks. Best news I’ve heard since the price of nappies went down. Did it go down?
— Kevin L., Letham, 31 October 2026 -
Silent disco in a church. My gran’s right, that’s exactly what the 60s were like.
— Mary S., Perth, 31 October 2026
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