Stars Hollow is getting its biggest holiday makeover yet. Warner Bros. Studio Tour Hollywood is launching Gilmore Girls Holidays, a standalone ticketed event running December 12, 2026 through January 3, 2027, that organizers are calling the largest Gilmore Girls fan experience ever staged on the Burbank lot.
The new event marks a significant shift from past years, when the studio's winter backlot offering, known as Holidays Made Here, required guests to buy a full studio tour ticket just to wander through the Stars Hollow sets. According to Time Out, Gilmore Girls Holidays is now its own ticketed experience, with general admission starting at $79 and a bundle that includes the full Warner Bros. Studio Tour priced at $124. That restructuring, detailed in a release from PR Newswire, gives superfans a way to focus purely on Stars Hollow without committing to the three-hour studio tour.
Warner Bros. Studios is bringing an expanded backlot footprint to life for the occasion, with sets and experiences built around fan-favorite scenes and storylines from the show's run. Perhaps the most notable addition is Luke's apartment, which producers have rebuilt inside its original Stage 13 filming location using actual production specifications, according to the same PR Newswire release. That's a meaningful detail for fans of the show, since Luke's apartment was originally filmed on that soundstage.
Rebuilding a Connecticut Town in Burbank
That diner facade, along with the rest of Stars Hollow, sits on Warner Bros.' Midwest Street backlot, a 110-acre set built in the late 1930s that has hosted nearly 400 film and television productions, including The Music Man, The Dukes of Hazzard, and Pretty Little Liars. Recreating a Connecticut autumn and winter on that Southern California lot was never simple. As production designer Rachel Kamerman told LAist, the original production relied on artificial foliage, mashed potato flakes standing in for snow, and cutting-board material for the ice of a skating rink.
Beyond Luke's, the expanded event includes the Chilton graduation courtyard, an expanded walkthrough of the Hartford Gilmore estate, and an interactive holiday spin on Rory's bid at a basket auction, per the Time Out report. Food and drink options lean into the show's obsessions, with Caesar's chilaquiles nachos served in a collectible upside-down Luke's baseball cap and the Stars Hollow Creamery offering custom shakes dedicated to each of Rory's boyfriends. The Secret Bar rounds things out with cocktails including an I Smell Snow Peppermint Colada, a Tiramisu Martini, and Jackson's Peach Julep.
Scott Patterson Appearances Cost Extra
For fans hoping to meet the man behind Luke Danes, Warner Bros. Studio Tour Hollywood is selling individual add-on experiences with actor Scott Patterson, who played the gruff diner owner across all seven original seasons. A professional photo opportunity for up to four people runs $99, while a ticket to a live 60-minute taping of Patterson's iHeartRadio podcast, I Am All In, costs $50, according to details listed on Warner Bros. Studio Tour Hollywood's own site. Those add-ons sit on top of general admission, meaning the full Scott Patterson experience could push costs well beyond the base ticket price.
Shoppers can also take home a collectible gazebo popcorn bucket, limited-edition Her Universe apparel, and Department 56 miniatures of Kim's Antiques and Miss Patty's, rounding out the event's merchandise lineup. The new hours extend backlot access until 8 pm daily, on top of standard studio tour hours of 8:30 am to 3:30 pm, so visitors can see Stars Hollow lit up for the season in addition to daytime hours, the PR Newswire release notes.
Riding a Wave of Anniversary Momentum
This expansion follows the show's 25th anniversary celebrations in late 2025, when Warner Bros. marked the milestone with nightly tree-lighting ceremonies and themed light shows on the backlot, as reported by ScreenRant. Gilmore Girls, created by Amy Sherman-Palladino, premiered on The WB Network on October 5, 2000, and ran for 153 episodes across seven seasons before wrapping on The CW in May 2007. Starring Lauren Graham as Lorelai Gilmore and Alexis Bledel as Rory Gilmore, the show later returned for Netflix's four-part 2016 miniseries Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, according to CBS Philadelphia.
The series is associated with autumn and appears widely on social media each fall, per the same LAist report. Hoodline previously covered superfans flocking to Brighton and also reported on a similar Northern California fan festival earlier this month. Tickets for the Burbank event are available at wbstudiotour.com.
