By Christmas 2025, the city will have almost 12 million lights and a total of 460 streets illuminated by the Puente Genil company
On the morning of 30 July, the mayor of Vigo, Abel Caballero, inaugurated the installation of the lights that will decorate this Galician city for Christmas. The inauguration of these installation works marks the start of the installations that will be carried out by Ximenez Group workers during these months of 2025. Accompanied by several representatives of the Vigo City Council and employees of the company in charge of the installation, Caballero showed those present a selection of some of the motifs that will be installed in the historic centre of the city during the Christmas holidays, thus symbolising the start of the Christmas installation. In addition, during the event, the mayor of Vigo announced that a total of approximately 12 million LED lights will illuminate the city from November until after the holidays and that there will be a total of 460 streets decorated throughout the city, 40 more than last Christmas.
New features and surprises for Christmas 2025
Vigo will once again surpass itself with its display of LED lights and decorative motifs, including arches, illuminated elements and decorative trees.
Operators from the Ximenez Group, a leading artistic lighting company based in Puente Genil (Córdoba) that has been responsible for the installation in Vigo since 2017, will be working over the coming months in every corner of the city, coordinating with the City Council and paying special attention to the busiest areas. Kilometres of wiring, structures and 3D motifs will be deployed to shape Vigo’s Christmas universe. This meticulous work requires starting in the middle of summer so that everything is ready for the grand official lighting ceremony.
Abel Caballero has announced that this year there will be new features and surprises to continue impressing those who return to visit and those who will arrive for the first time, attracted by the Christmas phenomenon. “There will be no one in Spain or Europe who will not come to Vigo. There is no need to say anything to people who have already visited Vigo at Christmas. Everyone who comes to Vigo necessarily returns because Christmas is so attractive, so addictive, that we have a lot of families who come back, because, in addition, Vigo has a high quality of life and the cost of being here is affordable.”
An economic and tourist driver for Vigo
The lights of Vigo have completely changed the city’s tourist map. Before, December was a month with hardly any tourism in Vigo. Now it is one of the city’s peak seasons. The city is filled with visitors, hotels and restaurants are working at full capacity, and Vigo is internationally renowned for its Christmas celebrations. In this regard, the mayor has highlighted that the economic impact of Christmas on the city exceeds 800 million euros “by a conservative estimate” and, beyond that, “there is something that cannot be valued, which is the brand image“.
In just a few years, Christmas in Vigo has gone from being a locally celebrated holiday to becoming a tourist phenomenon, with millions of people travelling to see a spectacle that is unique in Spain. Caballero insisted at the Christmas installation launch event that this model has boosted the local economy, emphasising that it is not just about lights, but also employment, commerce, hospitality and promotion for the whole of Galicia.
Ximenez Group, the company responsible for the installation in Vigo
For Ximenez Group, Vigo’s Christmas lighting is an example of the transformative power of lighting. ‘When light becomes an experience, an identity and a tourist attraction, we are creating something that transcends the decorative. It is economy, it is employment and, above all, it is emotion for those who experience it,’ the company points out.
Caballero has publicly congratulated Ximenez Group for ‘its cooperation’ in an installation that ‘is very complicated’ due to the size of the project. So much so that he has clarified that the Vigo City Council is already “studying Christmas two and three years from now. This is not something improvised; it is very well studied, very calculated, very measured and planned. “And all this, he stressed, so that “the emblematic place for Christmas, instead of Times Square, is Vigo.”
With this symbolic act, Vigo officially begins a journey towards a new Christmas that is already part of its DNA.