Rockefeller Center's 76-Foot Christmas Tree Arrives in Midtown, NYC, Lighting Set for Dec. 2

Rockefeller Center has its 2026 Christmas tree. A Norway spruce from West Edmeston, in central New York, was cut down on Thursday, November 5, and trucked to Midtown, arriving on Saturday, November 7. Gothamist reports the tree stands 76 feet tall and is roughly 75 years old.

Decorating will continue until the lighting. Crews will wrap the tree in more than 50,000 LED lights and crown it with the Swarovski star. The tree will be lit on Wednesday, December 2, during the live "Christmas in Rockefeller Center" broadcast. It will then stay on display until January 9, 2027, serving as the backdrop for the skaters and shoppers who fill the center each holiday season.

The tree's story does not end when it comes down. Once the season is over, the spruce is milled into lumber and donated to Habitat for Humanity. NBC New York explains the process. The tree is laid out on Rockefeller Plaza, cut up and taken to a yard in New Jersey. There it is milled into two-by-four and two-by-six beams and branded with a Rockefeller Center stamp. Tishman Speyer, the firm that owns and operates Rockefeller Center, then donates the lumber to the nonprofit, which builds and improves homes across the country.

For visitors from Japan, the tree is one of the best-known sights of New York in December. The lighting day is only the start. Because the tree stays up for more than five weeks after the switch-on, travelers do not need to be in the city on December 2 to see it lit. The tree stands on Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown, between Fifth and Sixth avenues.

The tree's arrival on November 7 kicked off the season at the plaza, and the decorating that follows will turn the bare spruce into the lit centerpiece that New Yorkers and visitors know from year to year.

(Details are drawn from points that agree across reports by Gothamist, NBC New York, ABC7 New York.)