The Pantiles' Christmas Market Returns for 2026, With a New Nutcracker Trail

The Pantiles' Boutique Christmas Market is back for 2026, running on weekends through November and into December before switching to every day from 18 to 24 December. It's free to get in, and this year brings something new alongside the usual wooden chalets and festive entertainment: a Nutcracker Trail for families, with a prize draw attached.

The market runs Fridays to Sundays on 13-15, 20-22 and 27-29 November, then 4-6 and 11-13 December, before running daily from Monday 18 December through to Christmas Eve, Thursday 24 December (closing early, at 6pm, that last day). Hours on every other date are 11am to 8pm. Entry is free, and traders selling gift-related products can apply to take one of the chalets via the organisers.

The Pantiles says 5ft Nutcracker statues will be hidden around the historic colonnade for visitors to find and name - complete the trail and you're entered into a prize draw for £150 in vouchers to spend at participating Pantiles shops, restaurants and bars. There's also a Nutcracker craft workshop where children (and adults) can make and decorate their own wooden nutcracker ornament to take home, with all profits from the workshop going to a local charity. Further details on both are due closer to the time.

The Christmas Lights Switch-On - one of the town's longer-running festive traditions - kicks the season off, with a full itinerary still to follow. The Bandstand will host a programme of live music and entertainment throughout, and Rudolph's Runner, the festive land train that shuttles around the town stopping at the Pantiles and The Corn Exchange, is returning too, delivered by RTW Together BID alongside the Pantiles, Paramount Place by Retirement Village Group and the UK Government's Shared Prosperity Fund.

The market goes ahead as usual even with the wider Pantiles estate still up for sale, and comes not long after repair work started on the colonnade's Upper Walk and THE PIG bought the hotel next door. Source: The Pantiles