The Liberty Memorial Tower will be illuminated by an artistic projection show this fall, transforming the 217-foot landmark into a canvas of light, sound and motion for seven weekends starting Sept. 25. Liberty's Beacon is free, requires no ticket, and runs on the North Lawn of the National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, with organizers inviting the public to attend.
According to KMBC, the eight-to-10-minute projection-mapping show debuts Friday, Sept. 25, 2026, and runs through Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. Each night's performance begins at 7:30 p.m. and repeats every 15 minutes on the quarter-hour and half-hour marks until the final showing ends at 10:30 p.m. The show depicts the memorial's four core virtues — honor, courage, sacrifice and patriotism — and doubles as a commemoration of both the museum's 100th anniversary and America's 250th anniversary, the station reports.
An International Roster of Light Artists
The visuals come from a lineup of artists. Xavier de Richemont, Leslie Epsztein, Camille Gross and Onionlab are named in EIN Presswire. Different artists will be featured as the show changes throughout its run, giving repeat visitors a reason to come back across the seven weekends.
Digital Media Manager Jobeth Davis is credited with reporting on the show for the station, while National WWI Museum and Memorial President and CEO Matt Naylor framed the project's meaning. Naylor said the memorial's founders built it on values meant to outlast their own time and hoped future generations would know peace, per the station's report. He added that Liberty's Beacon honors the memorial's last hundred years and imagines what the next century will ask of people.
A Tower Built for Spectacle
The Liberty Memorial Tower rises 217 feet above the main courtyard and 268 feet above the North Lawn, anchored by four 40-foot-tall sculpted Guardian Spirits, according to a National WWI Museum and Memorial video. The projection show uses the tower as its canvas.
Liberty's Beacon uses projection mapping to turn the tower into a canvas for a seven-weekend run.
A Landmark Rooted in a 10-Day Fundraising Drive
Before the light show became the headline, the memorial itself carried a story of rapid civic mobilization. In 1919, Kansas City residents raised $2.5 million — equivalent to more than $45 million today — in just 10 days through a community fundraising drive to build the monument following World War I, according to Kansas City Parks & Recreation.
The site itself has hosted history at a national scale. U.S. Congress designated the institution as the nation's official World War I Museum in 2004, followed by a second congressional designation in 2014 formally recognizing it as the National WWI Museum and Memorial.
A Centennial Gala Precedes the Public Run
Before Liberty's Beacon opens to the public, it will premiere on Sept. 21, 2026, during a Centennial Gala, according to the National WWI Museum and Memorial. The gala honors a century of the memorial.
To mark its 100th anniversary, the museum has also established a $10 local admission discount running from Aug. 1 through Dec. 30, 2026, for residents of seven Kansas City-area counties, including Jackson, Clay, Platte, Leavenworth and Wyandotte. While the outdoor projection show is free to everyone, the discount gives area residents a lower-cost way to pair a visit to the underground museum galleries with a night watching the tower light up above them.
The memorial's grounds have already drawn other community programming this year — a relocated hot dog festival moved onto the site on Aug. 22, a sign of the museum's growing role as a gathering place beyond its galleries. With Liberty's Beacon set to run every weekend through Veterans Day, organizers are betting that a century-old monument still has room to surprise visitors after dark.
