What is the APS Electric Light Parade?
The streetlights on Central Avenue go off, and then the floats come on. On the first Saturday of December, at 7 p.m., Phoenix runs the Valley’s only large night parade: about 100 lit entries, floats wrapped in strings of LEDs, high-school marching bands with lights on their hats, fire trucks and police motorcycles, the Diamondbacks’ and Suns’ mascots, dance schools, church groups, and Santa at the end, rolling 2.3 miles from Central and Montebello south to Camelback Road, east to 7th Street, and south to Indian School Road.
The Phoenix Parks and Recreation Department has produced it since 1987, and Arizona Public Service, the investor-owned utility that splits Scottsdale with SRP, has been title sponsor all along. The 2026 edition, Saturday, December 5, is the 39th, a count that includes 2020, when the parade became a television special assembled from the previous year’s footage. It is free. The curbs along Central fill by mid-afternoon, and the crowd, which ABC15 put at more than 100,000 in 2016 and which the city now describes as hundreds of thousands, is the largest single-night gathering of the Phoenix holiday calendar.
For a visitor based in Scottsdale it is a 25-minute drive west on Camelback Road and an evening in a part of the Valley the resort corridor rarely sends anyone: the North Central neighborhoods, 7th Street’s restaurant row, the light rail. Our holiday season note has it as the one Phoenix night worth the trip.
How to watch it like a Phoenician
Where to stand. The parade spends its first half hour or so on Central Avenue between Montebello and Camelback, and that is where the families set up folding chairs at 3 p.m. The turn at Camelback is the most crowded corner on the route. 7th Street between Camelback and Indian School fills last, has the most parking on side streets, and empties fastest afterward because the floats are breaking down at the VA hospital at the end. Stay behind the cones; once the streetlights are cut, the street is dark and the floats are the only light.
How to get there. The city’s advice is the light rail, and it is right: the Central/Camelback station is at the parade’s turn and the Indian School/Central station a mile west of the finish, and trains run late. From Scottsdale without a train, drive Camelback Road west past 24th Street and park on a residential street north of Camelback between 16th and 7th Streets, then walk in; do not try to cross Central after 5 p.m. Street parking near the route is free and gone early; private lots charge whatever they like.
What to bring. Chairs, blankets, a cooler without alcohol or glass, a flashlight for the walk back, and a jacket, because a December night on Central is in the 40s by the time Santa passes. Dinner is easy along 7th Street, where the restaurants book up early on parade night; eat at 5 and you will be seated.
With children. Stake out a curb, not a second row; the floats are low and the bands are loud. The parade is long, close to two hours at any one point, and the first entries are the sponsors’ floats, so arrive by 6:30 for the fire trucks and bands, not at 7 for the banner. If a night out in Phoenix is one too many, ABC15 airs the parade on Sunday, December 14 and again Christmas morning.
Thirty-nine years on Central
Night parades with lit floats were an idea of the 1980s, and Phoenix launched the Valley’s biggest in 1987 with the electric company’s name on it, a neat piece of sponsorship for a utility whose business is light. The route has stayed on Central Avenue, the city’s ceremonial spine, with the staging at North Phoenix Baptist Church at 5757 N Central and the finish by the VA hospital at 7th and Indian School, long enough that the neighborhoods along it treat the first Saturday of December as a block party.
The parade grew with the city. The 30th edition in 2016 brought float judging and a Santa’s Village the night before and a crowd ABC15 estimated above 100,000. The 33rd in 2019 fielded more than 90 entries under the theme “Walking in a Desert Wonderland.” In 2020 the city cancelled the street parade and aired a 60-minute special on ABC15 built from 2019 footage and holiday messages, counted it as the 34th, and brought the real thing back on December 4, 2021. Recent years have run about 100 entries, with the spots filling months ahead; the 2026 roster closed with a waiting list.
The attendance figure is the one soft number. News outlets have used “more than 100,000”; the city’s page says “hundreds of thousands”; a 300,000 figure circulates on event listings without a source we could find. What is certain is that the curbs along two and a half miles are full, which at a parade is the only number that matters.
Why Scottsdale should cross Central
Scottsdale’s parade is the Parada del Sol, a February morning of horses and stagecoaches down Scottsdale Road that calls itself the world’s largest horse-drawn parade. Phoenix’s is the opposite in every particular: night, December, electric, and almost no horses. A visitor who sees both in one winter understands the Valley better than one who sees either twice.
The Electric Light Parade is also free in a month when the Valley’s holiday events increasingly are not, and it belongs to the whole city rather than a resort or a shopping district. For that, and for the moment the streetlights die and the first float comes down Central under its own glow, it earns one Saturday a year from anyone staying on the other side of the 51.