Affiliate Disclosure

Plainly, and before anything else: London Christmas Lights Tours may earn a commission when you book through a link on this site, at no extra cost to you.

What that means in practice

The tours listed here are sold through GetYourGuide and Viator. When you follow a link from one of these pages and go on to book, the platform pays us a share of its own commission. You pay the same fare either way; the price on the booking page is the operator's price, not a marked-up one.

What we are not

We are not a tour operator. We do not run any of these tours, employ any of these guides or drivers, or hold your booking. Your contract is with the operator, through the platform.

We have no connection with the Mayor of London, Transport for London, Visit London, VisitEngland, New West End Company or any other body that puts up the displays, or with any bus, taxi, walking or bike tour company.

How tours get listed

Operators cannot pay for placement, position or a badge. A badge on a card is a measured claim: Top rated only on a tour rated 4.9 or higher, Best seller only on the tour with the most reviews, Best value only on the lowest fare that buys what the site is about. A platform's own badge is not shown.

Today Top rated sits on the markets walk with mulled wine, rated 5.0 from more reviews than any other tour at that rating. Best value sits on the open-top Routemaster, the lowest fare for a seat under the lights at $29.69.

The most-reviewed listing is the Golden Tours bus on GetYourGuide. Golden Tours sells the same bus on both platforms, so we list it once, under its other listing, and a Best seller badge on a card whose count belongs to a listing we do not show would mislead. Nothing carries one.

The featured tours at the top of the homepage are three different ways to see the lights from three different starts: the open-top bus from the London Eye, the black cab that collects you from your hotel, and the silent-disco walk from Rathbone Street, which is also the one of the three that walks Oxford Street.

Prices, ratings and how current they are

Prices, star ratings and review counts belong to the operators and were taken from their own listings on 29 September 2026. They move, and the figure at checkout is the one that counts. Every fare is quoted in US dollars, the currency the listings were captured in. Some are per person and some per cab or per group, and each price says which.

One fare was on offer when the listings were captured, and the offer price is the one shown; the listing always shows the current one.

The Oxford Street closure comes from the Greater London Authority's release of 4 March 2026 and the Mayor of London's date of 29 September 2026. Switch-on dates are the 2025 ones, labelled as such. Sunset times are computed for central London with the NOAA solar algorithm. Christmas at Kew and Hyde Park Winter Wonderland dates and prices come from their own websites. Where a detail comes from a listing, such as a meeting point, a route or what the fare covers, it belongs to that tour.

What we deliberately do not publish

• A vehicle along the closed stretch. Many bus, cab and bike listings still name Oxford Street on their route. From 26 October 2026 no bus, taxi or cycle can use it between Orchard Street and Great Portland Street, so we never say one will.
• Dates no one has published. The 2026 switch-on dates and the date the Trafalgar Square tree is lit are not announced, so we give the 2025 dates and say so.
• A tour on Christmas Day. None of the tours listed here runs on 25 December.
• Transport times over Christmas. Services change over the holiday, and we do not print a timetable we cannot check against the operator's own page.
• Access claims either way. We print what an operator's own words support and ask you to check before you book.
• A telephone number. Neither ours nor an operator's: book and ask through the listing.