Islington has no fireworks display in 2026. Coram's Fields is free on Thursday 5 November, fireworks 6pm; Ally Pally is 7 and 8 November, from £11.50.
Islington has no borough fireworks display, and there is no sign of one for 2026. The council’s own website carries not a single page advertising a display, and the last one on Highbury Fields was scrapped in 1999. The nearest free display to most of the borough is at Coram’s Fields in Bloomsbury on Bonfire Night itself, Thursday 5 November 2026.
Updated 4 October: Alexandra Palace has published both nights’ line-ups, a German beer festival with a Queen tribute band on Saturday and a jungle kids’ rave and karaoke with Shaun Williamson on Sunday. Coram’s Fields still says fast-track and free accessible tickets come out this week; no booking link is live yet.
Updated 29 September: Alexandra Palace now lists tickets from £11.50, with its presale open.
That is the honest answer to the question people type in every October. What follows is where the fireworks actually are, what they cost, and what the law says about letting off your own in Islington.
Is there an Islington fireworks display in 2026?
No. Two separate checks say so.
Islington Council’s website runs to 3,021 pages, and searching every one of them for a fireworks event returns nothing. The only firework pages the council publishes are a trading standards page about the law and a licence page for shops that want to sell them. Neither mentions a display.
The borough’s display used to run on Highbury Fields. It was dropped in 1999 after a crowd of around 20,000 raised safety concerns, and although Islington Labour campaigned in 2010 on bringing it back, the cost of meeting police requirements, reported at the time as heading towards £80,000, killed the plan. The Islington Gazette covered both the pledge and the decision not to honour it. Nothing has changed since.
If that changes for 2026, it will be announced on the council’s newsroom at islington.media, and this page will be updated.
Coram’s Fields, Bloomsbury: free, and the closest
Coram’s Fields is about a mile from Angel and closer still to Clerkenwell. It holds its display on Bonfire Night itself.
The organiser’s Fireworks Night 2026 page confirms:
- Thursday 5 November 2026, 93 Guilford Street, WC1N 1DN
- Gates open 3.30pm, live performances from 4.15pm, fireworks at 6pm, event closes 7pm
- Free, and no ticket is required. Entry is first come, first served and subject to the park’s capacity. Paid fast-track tickets, covering one adult and one child with extra people added to the booking, guarantee entry through the Pitches gate opposite the Foundling Museum. Coram’s Fields says they will be released during the first week of October. They do not buy a better view
- Adults may only attend when accompanied by a child. Coram’s Fields is a children’s park and enforces this year round, so a group of adults will be turned away
- A full pedestrian road closure is in place on Guilford Street during the event
- Food and drink stalls, fairground rides and an accessible viewing area, reached from the Guilford Street entrance. That area needs a free ticket, released alongside the fast-track ones
The 6pm display and the adults-with-a-child rule are the two details people get wrong most often. Arriving at 6pm means arriving as it starts.
Alexandra Palace: the big one, ticketed, two nights
Ally Pally sits on the ridge above Finsbury Park and Archway, and its display has moved to a full weekend for 2026. From the venue’s own event page and its booking site:
- Saturday 7 and Sunday 8 November 2026, gates 4pm both days
- Saturday is the party night, with the fireworks and drone display at 8pm, a headline outdoor DJ set from Eats Everything and what the venue calls London’s largest German beer festival, with a Queen tribute band
- Sunday is the first Family Fun Day, with an earlier 6pm display, a jungle kids’ rave and a karaoke singalong with Shaun Williamson, Barry from EastEnders
- Bonfire, funfair, ice skating and street food on both days
- Tickets from £11.50, the price the venue’s page now shows. The early bird rate of £10.50 it advertised in early September, and the offer of free under-10 places on Sunday early bird tickets, no longer appear there. A presale is open to people who sign up on the booking site
- Ticket bands are adult, child aged 11 to 15, and under-10
The drones are the part worth planning around. Celestial, the company that finished runner-up on Britain’s Got Talent in May 2026, returns for a third year.
Getting there from Islington is easiest by train: Alexandra Palace station is a few minutes from Finsbury Park on the Great Northern line, and the walk up through the park is steep. Driving is a poor idea on either night. If you are weighing it up, our Islington parking page explains what leaving a car in the borough costs, and the roadworks and travel page covers current closures.
Letting off your own: what Islington allows
The council’s fireworks page is blunt about where they can and cannot be used. “Bonfires and fireworks are only allowed in a private garden or as part of an organised display. They are not permitted in our parks, communal areas of housing estates or on streets.”
That rules out Highbury Fields, Gillespie Park, Caledonian Park and every estate courtyard in the borough.
On timing, the same page states it is a criminal offence to let off fireworks between 11pm and 7am. The exceptions are Bonfire Night, when the cut-off moves to midnight, and New Year’s Eve, Diwali and Chinese New Year, when it moves to 1am.
Shops can only sell fireworks in set windows: 15 October to 10 November for Bonfire Night and 26 to 31 December for New Year. The council’s page still prints the weekdays from 2023 (“Sunday 15 October to Friday 10 November”); in 2026 the window runs from Thursday 15 October to Tuesday 10 November. Anyone storing and selling them in the borough needs a council licence, and sales are restricted to over-18s.
To report fireworks being thrown or set off in the street, the council directs people to the police on 101, or 999 if someone is at risk, with wider anti-social behaviour reported to the council.
What is still to be confirmed
- Alexandra Palace has not published a full ticket price list on its own pages, only the “from £11.50” starting price. Full pricing sits inside the booking flow.
- Coram’s Fields has not published its fast-track ticket price or the capacity for 2026. As of 4 October its page still says the fast-track tickets, and the free tickets for the accessible viewing area, will be released in the first week of October; no booking link is live yet.
- The formal road closure notices. Coram’s Fields describes its Guilford Street pedestrian closure on its own page, but neither organiser had published a traffic order for 2026 as of 5 September. Those normally go out in late October.
We will update this page as each of those is published. If you are planning the rest of the season, our things to do in Islington page covers what is on the rest of the year.
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