The Union Square Holiday Ice Rink officially reopened for the holly jolly season Wednesday night, and mark your calendars, because the giant Macy’s Christmas tree is getting lit up next Tuesday night.
With Halloween and Election Day now over, you realize that anything with an even marginal attachment to retail shopping is now going all-Christmas, all-the-time for the next eight weeks in a row. And that formula obviously applies to the SF shopping district at Union Square, as NBC Bay Area reports that the Union Square Holiday Ice Rink officially opened Wednesday night for its 18th year, though its technical name is (sigh) the Safeway Holiday Ice Rink in Union Square Presented by Kaiser Permanente.
Though the bigger announcement to many of you may be the fact that the Macy’s Holiday Tree in Union Square will be lit this Tuesday, November 11. (As seen above, it's already being built.) Oddly, the official Union Square website does not list a tree lightning event. For whatever reason, that’s how it’s gone for the last couple of years, with organizer Union Square Shopping saying “there will be no Tree Lighting Event again this year.” But you can still head down to Union Square around dusk on Tuesday, and there will still be a countdown and an unofficial tree lighting ceremony.
Back to the ice rink. KRON4 has video of Wednesday night’s opening, where KRON4’s Sarah Stinson did the segment on ice skates, so credit to her for that. “We’re really excited,” director of rink operations Robert Keith. “We started building the rink about eight days ago. People kept coming by saying, ‘Wow, there’s the Chiller on Post Street.’ They said, ‘OMG, the ice rink is back, it’s back!'”
State Senator Scott Wiener and District 3 Supervisor Danny Sauter were also on hand, though all they wanted to talk about was how Macy’s is staying open for the foreseeable future, as every elected official in San Francisco is trying to take credit for that.
As a reminder, the ice skating rink is now open from 10 am to 10 pm every day. It’s $22 an hour for adults and $17 an hour for kids, and your skate rental is included in that charge. You can also rent lockers, socks, and gloves for a small fee.
And as usual, there are special events scheduled throughout the season. The ever-popular Drag Queens on Ice is Thursday, December 4 at 6:30 pm. The Silent Disco-inspired Silent Skate (you get headphones!) is Thursday, December 11, with two sessions at 7 pm and 8:30 pm, and New Year’s Day 2026 will once again host the Polar Bear Skate which is a wacky swimsuit-wearing skate meetup.
The Union Square Ice Ri — erm, Safeway Holiday Ice Rink in Union Square Presented by Kaiser Permanente is now open daily through January 19, 2026.
Related: Drag Queens On Ice Returns to the Union Square Holiday Ice Rink Thursday Night [SFist]
Image: SFMTA
