Burning the Clocks

2025 Fallow Year

Sadly, Burning the Clocks isn't able to go ahead in 2025. 

This is a huge loss for Brighton's festive season and a dark day in the pervasive power struggle between commercialisation and creative community. 

The cost of the event has skyrocketed by a massive 44% since 2019, to over £50,000 in 2024. 

Regretfully, there simply isn't enough funding towards the arts, forcing the much-loved and highly valuable Same Sky to take a fallow year to restrategise in the face of immense funding challenges. 

Nonetheless, we won't be left without, entirely - we're graciously granted a sneak-peek at the 2026 effigy, commissioned under the theme ‘Magicada’, which will be displayed in the city centre on December 21st.

Magicada is a reference to the Magicicada Septendecim - a species of cicada that emerges, synchronised, en-masse, every 13 or 17 years. As such, 2026's Burning the Clocks aptly symbolises a period of rest followed by a vociferous re-emergence. 

Same Sky are set to release more information about the event, so keep an eye on their socials and website in the coming weeks. 

Click here to donate to Same Sky, and show our appreciation for their fabulous contributions to communities across Sussex.

History of Burning the Clocks

Burning the Clocks has been a cherished event unique to Brighton for three decades. 

For the past 30 years, every 21st December, Brighton's streets are alive with a magical procession of beautiful illuminated lanterns, paraded by an assemblage 2,000-strong, and witnessed by over 30,000 merry onlookers.

Once the procession has found it's destination on the beach, these hand-made lanterns and the wishes they symbolise, are cast into a glorious bonfire and fireworks light up the night sky. 

Started in 1994, by community-led arts organisation Same Sky, as a bespoke celebration designed to gather the whole community, regardless of our individual differences, in celebration of the Winter Solstice - the shortest day and longest night of the year - marking the passing of time and ushering in the cherished new sun in a blazing inferno. 

Burning the Clocks faces away from the rampant commercialisation of Christmas and towards the more time-honoured value of cherishing togetherness and connection. Over the years, it's grown to be the biggest Christmas event in the Brighton calendar. 

Leading up to the event, Same Sky hosts free lantern-making workshops for local community groups - from homeless youth to young carers and single dads - encouraging them to channel their valuable creativity into an encouraging, communal, and mindful experience. 

Venue details