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The Seoul Festival of Lights is Seoul's flagship winter light festival, centered on Gwanghwamun Square in front of Gyeongbokgung Palace, where a large-scale media art show transforms the square's historic gate and surrounding buildings into a canvas for projection mapping and light displays set to traditional Korean music. Since 2023 it has run as part of the citywide Seoul Winter Festa, which unites several previously separate winter light events — including Gwanghwamun's own show and the lantern displays along the nearby Cheonggyecheon Stream — under one shared season and theme.
Held annually from mid-December into early January, the festival now draws several million visitors across its run, making it one of the largest winter light festivals in Asia.
Gwanghwamun Square's own winter light show and the separate Seoul Lantern Festival both trace back to around 2009, when Seoul first staged large-scale media art installations at Gwanghwamun Square and, independently, launched an annual lantern display along the nearby Cheonggyecheon Stream. The two ran on their own separate names, themes, and venues for over a decade.
In 2022, the Lantern Festival moved its main display to Gwanghwamun Plaza itself, and the following year the city consolidated its various winter light events into the single Seoul Winter Festa — giving Seoul's winter light programming one unified season and identity rather than several separately branded events. The unified festival drew a reported 7.4 million visitors in its first year (2023) and has continued to draw several million more in each year since.
Gwanghwamun Square itself now hosts two of the festival's biggest draws side by side: a media art and projection-mapping show pairing generative-AI-driven visuals with traditional Korean music against the backdrop of Gwanghwamun Gate and Gyeongbokgung Palace, and the Seoul Lantern Festival's own main display of over 200 illuminated sculptures and interactive lantern installations, which moved to the square from its original home along Cheonggyecheon Stream in 2022 (a smaller presence remains along the stream itself).
The wider festival also includes a Christmas market, an outdoor ice skating rink, and a New Year's Eve bell-ringing ceremony at Bosingak Pavilion, where thousands of participants wear LED wristbands that light up in coordinated displays.
Gwanghwamun Square itself sits at the symbolic center of Seoul, a broad pedestrian plaza running along Sejongno Boulevard directly in front of Gwanghwamun, the main gate of Gyeongbokgung Palace. The festival's other venues span a similarly central stretch of the city, from the restored Cheonggyecheon Stream running below street level to the Dongdaemun Design Plaza a short distance east.
Most of the festival's light displays and markets are free to attend, though the ice skating rink charges separate admission (included with the Discover Seoul Pass for international visitors). The festival spans several venues across central Seoul — Gwanghwamun Square, Cheonggyecheon Stream, Seoul Plaza, Dongdaemun Design Plaza, and Bosingak Pavilion — close enough together to visit several in one evening on foot or via a short subway ride.