How We Check Our Dates

Most Christmas market listings online are copied from other Christmas market listings. Dates drift from site to site, last year’s details get republished under this year’s heading, and nobody goes back to the source. We do. This page explains exactly how.

1. Every date comes from the organiser

We only publish dates we have found on the organiser’s own website, the city or council’s official page, the tourist board, or a published announcement from the organiser reported in the local press. We never take dates from another listings site, however authoritative it looks — including the big ones. When a listings site and the organiser disagree, the organiser wins.

2. Every listing is stamped with the day we checked

Each listing carries a postmark showing the date we last verified it, and a link to the source we checked it against. If a listing was checked in August and it is now December, you can see that — and you should weigh it accordingly. We would rather show you an honest date than an impressive one.

3. We check the weekday, not just the date

This is the single most useful test we know. Organisers announce events as “Saturday 21 November”, and the weekday and the date have to agree. When a site republishes last year’s details and only changes the year, the weekday stops matching.

It catches real errors. While building this guide we found a source listing a London lights switch-on for Thursday 6 November 2026. The sixth of November 2026 is a Friday — but it was a Thursday in 2025. We found a second switch-on listed for “Friday 28 November”, which in 2026 is a Saturday. Neither made it onto this site.

4. If a market hasn’t announced, we say so

Many markets confirm their dates only in September or October, and some later still. Rather than filling the gap with an estimate, we hold those listings back and show them on our awaiting dates page, with the day we last checked and the source we are watching. A page with nothing on it is more honest than a page with a guess on it.

5. We watch for announcements

Every week, an automated check looks at the official pages for every market we are waiting on. When a page changes, we are alerted and a person goes and reads it. The automation never publishes anything by itself — a changed page is a prompt to look, not a fact.

6. Closures are part of the date

A market that runs from November to January is not necessarily open every day in between. York’s market closes on Tuesdays. Cologne’s closes for one Sunday in late November. Most close on Christmas Day. Our What’s open? tool applies the closures we have confirmed, and flags Christmas Day as unconfirmed rather than assuming a market is open.

7. Readers help, and we check them too

Readers send us markets and switch-ons we would never otherwise find — they are often announced only on a council noticeboard or a local Facebook page. Every submission goes through the same checks before it is published. Submitting something does not publish it.

What we can’t promise

Events change after we check them. Organisers move dates, shorten hours and occasionally cancel, sometimes at very short notice, and we cannot know the moment they do. That is why every listing links to its official source. Always confirm with the organiser before you travel or book.

If you spot something wrong, please tell us. We would much rather be corrected than be wrong.