Boston Frostival is coming back for its second year, kicking off in December with a longer run of activations than its 2025 debut, including holiday-themed drone shows over Boston Common, a bigger pop-up lodge in Copley Square, and a Ferris wheel on the Rose Kennedy Greenway that will spin well into spring.
The citywide winter campaign stretches across three months this time around, according to MassLive. Meet Boston, the tourism agency behind the program, officially launched the inaugural Frostival in November 2025 as a multi-month push to drive leisure travel and hotel stays in Boston and Cambridge during the traditionally slower winter months, according to Meet Boston.
“The first year of Frostival was a great success, and we are excited to build on that going into year two,” Meet Boston's Martha J. Sheridan said in a statement. She added that Boston's “outdoor activities, culinary and cultural experiences, live entertainment, and sporting events” are what the program ties together.
Drone Shows Light Up Boston Common Over Three Saturdays
Frostival opens on December 5, 2026, with drone shows lighting up the sky above Boston Common on three consecutive Saturdays — December 5, 12, and 19. Each evening features two 15-minute shows, one at 6 p.m. and another at 8 p.m., celebrating Boston events, landmarks, and holiday traditions, per the MassLive report.
The format echoes last year's debut, when organizers built the entire campaign around pulling cold-weather visitors to the city. Meet Boston even ran an outdoor ad campaign in September 2025 called “Dying For Winter,” using imagery of melting snowmen to convince out-of-state travelers to book winter trips, according to Ads of the World.
Copley Square Lodge Gets More Space and a Full Bar
The Frostival Lodge is expected to be larger and open longer than it was last year, opening January 22, 2027, in Copley Square and running until February 2027. The expanded footprint is set to include trivia and bingo nights, musical performances, tabletop games, tea service, a full bar, wine tastings, and author and poetry readings, along with a new food menu, the outlet reports.
During its inaugural run in February 2026, the lodge operated as an alpine-style pop-up furnished by Wayfair, with food and beverage supplied by Eataly Boston alongside fire pits and curling lanes, according to Meet Boston. The added space this year is meant to make room for more of those kinds of activations alongside the new additions.
Ferris Wheel Season Stretches Into Late April
The 75-foot Frostival Ferris wheel is returning to the Rose Kennedy Greenway for an extended season, offering views of the Boston skyline when it opens in February 2027 and running through April 25, 2027. The longer schedule follows strong turnout during its first run: the inaugural wheel, which stood near the Greenway Carousel on Atlantic Avenue and charged $4 per ride according to FUN 107, had its season extended beyond its original March 1 closing date, running through April 12.
Part of a Broader Winter Tourism Strategy
Frostival was designed as a unified umbrella campaign that stitches together existing winter draws — like the Seaport's “Snowport” market, which pulls in more than one million visitors annually — with new anchor attractions, according to Luxury Travel Advisor. Last year's inaugural schedule also included specialty events such as the Femme Fête Wine Festival at the historic Cyclorama on February 28, 2026, which featured more than 40 women winemakers and female-owned wineries from around the globe.
The push comes as Greater Boston's visitor economy generated $12.6 billion in total economic impact in 2024, a 3.5% year-over-year increase driven largely by food services spending and international travel, per Meet Boston's own tourism data. Boston drew roughly 38.7 million domestic visitors and 2.2 million international visitors in 2025, with domestic travelers alone spending $14.08 billion in the city, according to data compiled by Road Genius.
Meet Boston itself dates back to December 2022, when the former Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau rebranded and launched its “Boston Never Gets Old” campaign with advertising agency Allen & Gerritsen. Frostival represents the agency's latest attempt to turn the city's coldest months into a tourism asset rather than a lull.
