In this guide
What City Hall Has Confirmed, Year by YearWho Actually PaysWhere the Money GoesCost to Stage Against Cost to AttendHow London Compares With SydneyFAQsThe London New Year's Eve fireworks cost the Greater London Authority (GLA) a budget of £4.1m for the display that welcomed 2024, with a further £1.75m of ticket revenue spent on top, according to a GLA Freedom of Information response published in February 2025. That is the most recent figure City Hall has confirmed, and it makes the 12 minutes after Big Ben the most expensive quarter of an hour in the London events calendar.
Article Summary: Staging London's midnight fireworks costs the GLA between £3m and £4.1m a year in confirmed budgets, before ticket income of £1.3m to £1.75m is added. Tickets were introduced in 2014 at £10 to control crowds, not to fund the show, and City Hall says it makes no profit. The fireworks themselves are a small share of the bill; stewarding, security and road closures take most of it.
- The GLA budget for the display welcoming 2024 was £4.1m plus £1.75m in ticket revenue, per a GLA FOI response dated 5 February 2025.
- The display welcoming 2023 had a £3m GLA budget with a further £1.3m recouped through ticket sales, per a Mayor's Question answer.
- Ticket prices for the 31 December 2025 display ranged from £20 to £55, with a £20 discount for London postcodes, per the GLA event listing.
- Around 12,000 fireworks are fired from three barges and the London Eye in roughly 12 minutes, with more than 3,300 stewards and security staff on the ground.
The 31 December 2026 display is confirmed by the GLA to run from 8pm to 12.30am, with the ticket release date still to be announced as of September 2026. 1BoxOffice lists London New Year Fireworks tickets for the riverside viewing areas once they reach the market, so the section below on ticket prices is worth reading before that window opens.
What City Hall Has Confirmed, Year by Year
The GLA rarely volunteers a cost figure. Most of what is public comes from Mayor's Questions and Freedom of Information requests, which is why so many articles still quote decade-old numbers. The table below lists only figures City Hall has stated itself, identified by the date of the display rather than the year in the event title, because the GLA labels the display welcoming 2024 as "the 2023 event".
| Display date | GLA budget or total cost | Ticket income | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 31 Dec 2015 | £3.1m total cost | £758,831 from 106,428 tickets at £10 | Mayor's answer cited by the London Assembly, February 2016 |
| 31 Dec 2017 | About £3.15m including production, crowd management, ticketing and marketing | About £858,333 net of VAT | Mayor's Question answer |
| 31 Dec 2020 | £1.5m for a broadcast-only show during Tier 4 restrictions | None, no public event | Mayor's Question answer |
| 31 Dec 2022 | £3m budget | £1.3m recouped through ticket sales | Mayor's Question answer |
| 31 Dec 2023 | £4.1m budget (first reported as £3.85m) | £1.75m | GLA FOI responses, January 2024 and February 2025 |
| 31 Dec 2024 | Not published; costs "still being reconciled" in February 2025 | Not published, around 100,000 ticket holders | GLA FOI response, February 2025 |
| 31 Dec 2025 | Not published as of September 2026 | Not published | No GLA disclosure found |
Two figures that circulate widely are not on that table for a reason. The "£2.5m" often quoted for the display welcoming 2025 has never been confirmed by the GLA, which told a requester in February 2025 that the cost was still being reconciled. Claims of a £5m budget funded by named corporate sponsors come from content-farm sites and match nothing City Hall has published.
Who Actually Pays
The bill sits with the GLA's events and culture budget, which is funded by the same pot as the rest of City Hall: council tax precept, business rates and government grant. Ticket revenue reduces the net cost but has never covered it. In 2016 the Mayor confirmed that the £758,831 raised from tickets left about £2.3m to be met by London taxpayers and event sponsorship, and the GLA's own FOI response from February 2025 states plainly that it makes no profit from the event.
Tickets exist because of crowd control, not fundraising. After more than 500,000 people packed the riverside on 31 December 2013, the Mayor introduced a capped, ticketed footprint of around 100,000 places in 2014. The £10 charge was set to cover only the ticketing infrastructure. Within hours of the first sale, tickets were listed on resale sites for up to £500, a controversy that still shapes the GLA's insistence on a sole seller and face-value resale.
Where the Money Goes
The fireworks are the smallest line on the invoice. The Mayor's office has repeatedly said pyrotechnics are only a small fraction of the total, and the answer to a 2017 Mayor's Question breaks the £3.15m into production, creative, crowd management, ticketing and marketing. The 2025 FOI response adds the scale of the safety operation: more than 3,300 security staff, stewards, managers and response teams on the ground on the night.
- Crowd management and security: the largest cost, covering the ticketed perimeter, entry gates, ID checks and stewarding across six viewing areas.
- Road and bridge closures: Westminster, Lambeth, Waterloo, Blackfriars and the Golden Jubilee bridges close, with vehicle restrictions from 2pm on 31 December to around 6am on 1 January.
- Production and broadcast: barges, sound systems along the embankments, lighting and the BBC One live feed.
- Pyrotechnics: Titanium Fireworks loads about 30 tonnes of equipment and 8 tonnes of fireworks onto three barges from 27 December, while a night crew rigs the London Eye after the last tourists leave.
- Ticketing, marketing and medical cover: the elements the original £10 ticket was designed to fund.
The GLA has also said, in its answer on why prices rose for the 31 December 2025 display, that the increase was needed to fund enhanced security and crowd management inside and around the event footprint. That is the clearest signal of where cost growth is coming from.
Stewarding six ticketed viewing areas takes the largest share of the budget
WhatsApp channel
Sports news straight to your phone
Match updates, on-sale dates and ticket news from 1BoxOffice.
Cost to Stage Against Cost to Attend
The two numbers people confuse most are the multi-million pound staging budget and the price of a viewing area ticket. A ticket has never been "the cost of the fireworks". Ticket prices were £10 from 2014, rose to £20 for the display welcoming 2024, and for the 31 December 2025 display ranged from £20 to £55 as of the GLA's event listing, with Category A areas (Blue, Pink and White) at £55 and Category B (Red, Green and Orange) at £40, less a £20 discount for anyone with a London postcode. Non-Londoner prices went up £5 that year.
Set 100,000 tickets against a £4.1m budget and the arithmetic is simple: even at the top price, ticket income covers well under half the cost. The GLA's stated return is economic rather than direct. Its 2025 FOI response says ticket holders spend an average of £138.75 in the capital, generating more than £14m for London's businesses, and the Mayor's office has repeatedly cited a UK television audience in the tens of millions for the BBC One broadcast.
How London Compares With Sydney
London is not the priciest midnight show in the world. Sydney's harbour display, which uses around 8.5 tonnes of shells across its 9pm and midnight shows, cost about A$6m (roughly £3.2m at September 2026 exchange rates) for the 2024 edition according to the accountancy body ACCA, with 1.6 million people watching for free from the foreshore. London spends a similar amount on a ticketed audience of 100,000, which is why the value-for-money debate returns to the London Assembly most winters.
The starker comparison is closer to home. In 2022, councils in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Cardiff, Glasgow and Nottingham cancelled their Bonfire Night displays on cost grounds. London's decision to keep spending £3m to £4m a year on 12 minutes of pyrotechnics is a deliberate choice about the capital's image, and City Hall defends it on tourism figures rather than the show itself.
FAQs
1. Does the Greater London Authority make a profit from the New Year's Eve fireworks?
-
No, the GLA stated in a February 2025 Freedom of Information response that it makes no profit from the event and that ticket income only offsets part of the cost.
2. Can you watch the London New Year's Eve fireworks without a ticket?
-
Nobody without a ticket is admitted to the six riverside viewing areas, but the display can be seen from vantage points outside the closed perimeter such as Primrose Hill, Greenwich and Alexandra Palace.
3. When do tickets for the 31 December 2026 London fireworks go on sale?
-
The GLA had not announced a release date as of September 2026, and in 2024 and 2025 the first batch went on sale in mid October with a final batch in late November or early December.
4. Why did London New Year's Eve fireworks ticket prices increase?
-
The GLA raised non-Londoner prices by £5 for the 31 December 2025 display to pay for enhanced security and crowd management within and around the event footprint, citing rising costs across the events industry.
5. Is the London New Year's Eve fireworks event suitable for young children?
-
The GLA advises against bringing young children because the event is late, crowded and standing only, and every attendee of any age needs a ticket while under-16s must be accompanied by an adult.
Once the GLA confirms the ticket release for the 31 December 2026 display, listings on 1BoxOffice sit alongside the wider range of London sightseeing tickets, all covered by the 150% money-back guarantee that applies across every event on the site.
Sources: Greater London Authority FOI disclosure log, Mayor's Questions archive, London Assembly press releases, London City Hall event listing for New Year's Eve 2025 and 2026, Titanium Fireworks, ACCA AB Magazine, City AM, Londonist.
