Franklin Park Zoo's glowing lantern trail is back for its sixth year, and this time the giant silk-and-steel creatures include swimming penguins, dolphins and great white sharks alongside a crow-wielding skeleton waiting at the end of the path. Boston Lights: A Lantern Experience opens Friday and runs through November 8, lighting up the zoo's Jamaica Plain grounds five nights a week into the fall.
The 2026 edition spotlights, as organizers describe it, “beloved creatures from across the globe,” according to MassLive. Visitors will walk through 100-foot-long lantern tunnels inspired by bamboo stalks and peacock feathers, pass a feline-shaped swing built for photos, and encounter displays modeled on the flora and fauna of the Grand Canyon, including gila monsters, wolves, desert tortoises, cacti and birds. Big cats get their own showcase too, with lantern depictions of jaguars, lions, cheetahs and snow leopards.
Penguins Get Their Lantern Moment After a Real-Life Debut
The penguin and dolphin displays arrive two months after Franklin Park Zoo unveiled its own $21 million Penguin Coast habitat, which introduced endangered African penguins and geothermal pool temperature controls as part of a broader conservation overhaul, Hoodline previously reported. The timing lines up the glowing lantern penguins with the zoo's real, feathered new residents just a short walk away during the day.
The festival is produced in partnership with Tianyu Arts & Culture, Inc., a Chicago-based company described as the largest producer of Chinese lantern festivals in North America, which handcrafts the displays out of steel frames, silk fabric and LED lights, according to the Everett Independent. Boston Lights first debuted at Franklin Park Zoo in August 2020 as the first Chinese lantern festival in New England, originally designed with touchless, socially distanced pathways during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, per Tianyu Arts & Culture.
Where the Animals Go When the Lights Come On
During evening Boston Lights hours, the zoo's real animals are moved into indoor facilities or off-exhibit quarters to shield them from the bright lights and crowd noise, ensuring they can rest undisturbed, according to The Huntington News. That means nighttime visitors are there for the lanterns, not the live exhibits. The same outlet notes that every light installation across the 72-acre festival footprint runs on energy-saving LED bulbs, tying the display into the zoo's broader conservation mission.
That mission is rooted in the ground beneath the lanterns. Franklin Park Zoo sits inside historic Franklin Park, a 72-acre landscape designed in the late 19th century by Frederick Law Olmsted as the final piece of Boston's Emerald Necklace park system, according to Zoo New England. The zoo is managed alongside Stone Zoo in Stoneham by Zoo New England, the public operating name of the non-profit Commonwealth Zoological Corporation, which Massachusetts state legislation created in 1991.
A Spooky Twist Arrives Later in the Run
As Halloween approaches, the lantern trail shifts tone with a giant evil pumpkin that interacts with onlookers and a crow-wielding skeleton waiting at the end of the path, per MassLive's account of the seasonal additions. Boston Lights is closed on Tuesday and Wednesday nights throughout August and September 2026, plus two additional dates, August 16 and August 29. Starting in October, hours shift to Thursday through Monday from 5 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., after running 6 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. on the same nights through September.
Tickets, Pricing and Who Qualifies for Discounts
Non-member ticket prices start at $31.95, with VIP tickets starting at $36.95, and children under 2 get in free. Zoo New England uses a dynamic Plan-Ahead Pricing system in which gate prices are the highest tier, and the zoo adds a mandatory $1.50 processing fee to every ticket bought online.
Those prices apply only to the evening lantern event. Massachusetts residents with EBT or WIC cards can get daytime zoo admission for $7, and Boston K-12 students qualify for free daytime passes through Boston Family Days — but Zoo New England explicitly excludes both equity discounts from Boston Lights tickets. Private groups can also rent a dedicated 40-by-60-foot party tent inside the zoo's Nature's Neighborhood during the event, with birthday packages starting at $1,400 for members and $1,500 for non-members for up to 25 guests.
