“The largest holiday projection mapping festival in the country" is returning to downtown San Francisco for the fourth consecutive year, and this year will have a boozy open-container party for one night of its ten-night run.  

It’s turning into a San Francisco holiday tradition that we light up the sides of downtown buildings in December with a dazzling projection-mapping display called Let’s Glow SF. And if you’re like Mariah Carey and get completely stoked for Christmas and holiday events while it's still early November, you will be thrilled to hear that Let’s Glow SF is coming back for 2024 and its fourth consecutive year, according to NBC Bay Area.  

If you haven’t seen this colorful, large-scale projection mapping display in previous years, the video above gives you a sense of what to expect. But this year’s projections will all be completely different from previous years. The holiday glee will be blasted onto the sides of buildings starting on Let’s Glow SF’s opening night of Friday, December 6 (7 pm), and then continue nightly (5:30-10 pm) through Sunday, December 15.

“Let’s Glow SF, the country’s largest holiday projection event, is returning to downtown San Francisco for the 2024 holiday season,” the project’s sponsor Downtown SF Partnership says in their announcement. “This free outdoor holiday projection arts festival has expanded this year to include seven locations featuring large-scale animated light installations by 13 artists from around the world and award-winning design studios, and an art installation at The Crossing at East Cut.”

This year's seven locations is one more than last year’s display. The above map shows the locations of the buildings at which these displays will be jazzing up their exteriors. The Let’s Glow SF displays are the purple-and-black dots on the map, all the green dots are restaurants and drinking establishments, as the Downtown SF Partnership would prefer you spend some money whilst enjoying the light show.

And there are two special “event” nights. On opening night of December 6, there will be a "countdown" celebration in front of the Ferry Building beginning at 5 pm, with the lights going on at 7 pm.

The following Friday December 13, there will be one of those boozy “entertainment zone” parties called Glow on Front: A Neon Block Party. Bars on Front Street will be selling open containers of alcohol to-go at Schroeder’s, Harrington’s Bar & Grill, and Royal Exchange, just like the recent Oktoberfest party there. While alcohol will be sold, it’s an all-ages event, promising “LED glow performers from Circosphere, glow face painters, a 360 photo booth, a black light community mural, and a live DJ with an LED dance floor at the block party.”  

Per NBC Bay Area, the Downtown SF Partnership estimates that last year’s Let';s Glow SF “brought in 67,000 attendees and $8 million in revenue for San Francisco.”

Related: Holiday-Themed Projection Mapping Display ‘Let’s Glow SF’ Returns to Razzle-Dazzle SF Buildings Friday Night [SFist]

Image: @sf_downtown via Twitter