Last May, San Diego city leaders talked openly about scaling back December Nights or ending it, as NBC 7 reported, while they worked to close a $118 million deficit. On Friday, Dec. 4, the festival opens for its 49th year anyway. It's also the only December Nights held while Balboa Park charges for lot parking.
Paid lot parking in Balboa Park began Jan. 5, 2026, and ends Jan. 1, 2027. The city's fee schedule makes one exception during that year. It says the annual City-sponsored December Nights event "is exempted from the Balboa Park Paid Parking Program within Balboa Park." The festival got through one city budget fight this year, and ending the paid parking program after it opens another one.
The festival was on the cut list in May
The mayor's office put the cost of December Nights at about $1.5 million, covering public safety, park operations, contractors and other support. The initial budget proposal for the fiscal year that started July 1 would have merged the city's Office of Special Events and Filming into Parks and Recreation, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. That office is the one that runs the festival. The mayor's office also said it was looking for philanthropic and corporate partners to support the 2026 festival and future ones.
On May 13, the mayor's revised budget put back the staffing needed to plan and run the event, Times of San Diego reported. NBC 7 reported that the mayor said the restored items would be paid for partly by raising the tourism occupancy tax and golf course rent.
The sponsor list in the city's Nov. 2 announcement shows that partnership model at work. San Diego Community Power is paying for free Ferris wheel rides and a holiday light show on the Museum of Art facade. Disneyland is running the children's activities, Home Depot is sponsoring the free DIY holiday art projects, and Bones Love Milk is putting on the half-pipe skateboarding demos in Palisades Plaza.
What's on the program
The city's announcement lists the basics for both days:
- Friday, Dec. 4, 4 to 10 p.m. The tree lighting is at 6 p.m. on the Spreckels Organ Pavilion stage, led by City Council President Joe LaCava.
- Saturday, Dec. 5, noon to 10 p.m. Clay Aiken plays a holiday set on the Organ Pavilion stage at 7:25 p.m.
- Both days: more than 1,600 performers in 70 groups on five stages, more than 200 food and retail booths, free evening entry to Balboa Park museums, food from the House of Pacific Relations International Cottages, Food Truck Alley at Village Place, and visits and photos with Santa in the Family Zone.
The city expects about 350,000 people over the two days and calls the event the largest free holiday festival in California.
A year of paid lots, with one exempt weekend
Balboa Park's paid lots are ending under a settlement over the city's trash fee. Homeowners challenged the new single-family trash fee under Proposition 218, and a separate campaign tried to repeal the fee at the ballot. Ending paid parking in Balboa Park was one of the concessions in the deal, according to KPBS.
Here is how 2026 has gone and what's still ahead:
- Jan. 5, 2026: Paid parking starts in the park's lots and on its new street meters.
- May 20: The City Council approves the settlement unanimously in closed session, Times of San Diego reported.
- June 8: The Council approves it unanimously in public, NBC 7 reported, and annual passes stop being sold.
- Sept. 30: Quarterly passes stop being sold.
- Nov. 30: Monthly passes stop being sold, four days before the festival opens.
- Dec. 4 and 5: December Nights, which the city's fee schedule exempts from the paid parking program within the park.
- Dec. 31: Any 2026 permit still valid expires, unless its printed expiration date comes first.
- Jan. 1, 2027: Paid parking in the lots ends.
The city is phasing out pass sales so that most passes expire before the fees end. Annual passes that run past Jan. 1 will get prorated refunds. The $5 resident registration fee won't be refunded, because that money goes to the parking vendor. The city's fee schedule also says annual, quarterly and monthly passes can't be used in spaces reserved by organizations holding a valid special event permit.
For comparison, on an ordinary 2026 day, a nonresident pays $16 for a full day in a Level 1 premium lot, and verified city residents pay $8. Vehicles with a Disabled Person plate or placard park free with no time limit in any Balboa Park lot or at any meter, in any space.
Getting there without circling the lots
The city still tells visitors to use the free December Nights shuttles because traffic is heavy and parking in the park is limited. The Nov. 2 announcement names shuttle service from City College, downtown and Little Italy, with drop-off and pickup at Sixth Avenue and Laurel Street.
MTS's December Nights page describes a free Park Boulevard shuttle from the City College Transit Center, which you can reach on the UC San Diego Blue or Orange trolley lines. That shuttle makes southbound stops between Zoo Drive and Broadway. MTS says the free ride covers only the Park Boulevard shuttle. For the west side of the park, it sends riders to the Fifth Avenue Trolley Station and Route 3 or 120. The city's Getting There page has the festival's transportation details.
Plan for the park's own tram. It's free and leaves from the Inspiration Point lot at Park Boulevard and Presidents Way, but it runs only from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. The festival runs until 10 p.m. both nights, so the tram is done for the night two hours before the festival closes.
What stays after the lot fees end
Under the settlement, the city can keep the meters it recently installed on streets inside and just outside the park, the Union-Tribune reported. The city lists meters on Balboa Drive, El Prado, Juniper Road, Presidents Way, Quince Drive, Zoo Drive and Village Place inside the park. Outside it, there are meters on Sixth Avenue from Elm to Upas streets and on Park Boulevard from Village Place to Presidents Way, with a four-hour limit. Meters cost $2.50 an hour, up to $10 a day, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. After Jan. 1 the lots go back to free, and the curbs closest to El Prado will still have meters.
The money is the reason the change matters beyond December. Lot revenue was restricted to Balboa Park operations, maintenance and improvements. By mid-April 2026 the city had collected nearly $700,000 for that purpose, NBC 7 reported. Councilmember Stephen Whitburn estimated that ending lot fees will cost the city about $4.4 million in revenue in each of fiscal 2028 and 2029, according to the Union-Tribune.
That estimate leaves out the zoo. The zoo's updated lease requires it to pay the city $3 million a year, but that payment goes away if the zoo drops its own paid parking, and the lease allows that once the city has ended paid parking elsewhere in the park. When the Union-Tribune reported this in May, zoo officials said they weren't sure what they would do next. The same paper wrote that the deal doesn't stop the Council from bringing back lot fees after January, but that such a proposal seems unlikely for many years.
So the 2027 festival will be the 50th, with free lots and a city budget missing the parking revenue that was going to Balboa Park's upkeep. The mayor's office put this year's festival at about $1.5 million, and the December 2027 edition falls in fiscal 2028, the first year of Whitburn's estimated $4.4 million loss.
At Fontaine Realty Group, we follow city decisions like this one because they change how San Diego works day to day long before they show up anywhere else. If you have a question about how a city budget or fee change affects your part of the county, contact us. We're glad to talk it through.
