St Albans fireworks 2026: Sat 7 Nov, Verulamium Park, 7.30pm; adults £12.50 online now, £15 on the gate. Harpenden is Sun 1 Nov; Redbourn is the 7th.

The St Albans fireworks for 2026 are on Saturday 7 November in Verulamium Park: gates at 6pm, display at 7.30pm, finished by 8.15pm. The early bird has closed: tickets are now £12.50 an adult, £7.50 a child and £35 a family online, or £15 an adult on the gate. Bonfire night itself, Thursday 5 November, has no display in the city.

Redbourn’s free display on the Common is fixed for the same Saturday, if enough volunteers come forward. Harpenden Rugby Club’s fireworks are a week earlier, on Sunday 1 November, with the show at 6pm; its early bird prices end at midnight on Friday 23 October.

Updated 17 October: the cathedral’s £10 early bird ended at midnight on 16 October, so online prices are now £12.50 adult, £7.50 child and £35 family. Redbourn has still not confirmed it has the volunteers to go ahead.

St Albans fireworks 2026 at a glance

Display Date Gates Fireworks Adult ticket
St Albans Fireworks Spectacular, Verulamium Park Sat 7 Nov 6pm 7.30pm £12.50 online (early bird ended 16 Oct); £15 on the gate
Redbourn, Redbourn Common Sat 7 Nov not yet published 7pm in 2025 Free
Harpenden Rugby Club Sun 1 Nov 3pm 6pm £12.75 early bird to 23 Oct, then £17
Willows Activity Farm, London Colney (low bang) Fri 6 and Sat 7 Nov 6pm 7.30pm £14.95 online

St Albans Fireworks Spectacular, Verulamium Park, Saturday 7 November

The display is run by St Albans Cathedral, not by the council, and it is a fundraiser for two named charities: Isabel Hospice and the Herts Domestic Abuse Helpline. The cathedral’s event page, last updated on 7 October 2026, gives the timings as:

  • Gates and the Food Village open at 6pm
  • Fireworks at 7.30pm
  • Event ends at 8.15pm, per the start and end times on the same page

The date is confirmed twice over. The council’s own events in Verulamium Park page independently lists “St Albans Fireworks Spectacular, Saturday 7th November 2026”. The cathedral’s fireworks page still says “2025” in the browser tab, but the page itself is headed 2026 and carries 2026 prices; the stale bit is the tab, not the content.

One access detail is easy to miss. The cathedral’s page says the accessible area can be reached through Gate 1 only. If you need it, that decides which side of the park you approach from.

Fireworks fountains set off across the lake in Verulamium Park at night, with the crowd in silhouette on the near bank
Fireworks across the lake at Verulamium Park. Photo: Dave Skinner (CC BY-SA 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons

St Albans fireworks 2026 tickets

Tickets were sold in three tiers. The early bird ended at midnight on Friday 16 October, so the online price is the cheapest left. Book through the cathedral’s event page.

Early bird, until midnight on Friday 16 October (now closed)

  • Adult £10
  • Child aged 4 to 16 £6
  • Family, two adults and two children £28.50
  • Children 3 and under free

Online from Saturday 17 October

  • Adult £12.50
  • Child aged 4 to 16 £7.50
  • Family £35
  • Children 3 and under free

On the gate, from 6pm on the night

  • Adult £15
  • Child aged 4 to 16 £10
  • Family £40
  • Children 3 and under free

The cathedral says the family discount applies automatically in the basket. For a family of four, booking online now saves £5 on the gate price.

Parking, and why arriving early costs more

Two council car parks sit on the park. Their tariffs are not the same shape, and the cheap evening rate does not start until after most people have arrived.

Verulamium Surface Car Park, St Michaels Street, AL3 4SW. 150 spaces, 7 disabled bays, open 24 hours. It has no one or two hour tariff: the shortest stay is three hours at £2.80, charged Monday to Sunday up to 6.30pm. From 6.30pm to 10pm it is £2.00. PayByPhone codes are 802745 for cars and 802746 for coaches.

Westminster Lodge Car Park, Holywell Hill, AL1 2DJ. 325 spaces, 29 disabled bays, the largest option here. Up to two hours £1.50, three hours £3.20, four hours £5.90. It needs your registration number at the machine. Evening rate from 6.30pm to 10pm is £2.00.

If gates open at 6pm and the display starts at 7.30pm, arriving at 5.45pm means you buy a day tariff, not the £2 evening rate. At Verulamium that is £2.80 whatever you do. At Westminster Lodge £1.50 buys two hours, which does not cover a 5.45pm arrival and an 8.15pm finish, so £3.20 is the realistic ticket.

Check the park entrance you plan to use. The council’s Verulamium Park FAQ page still says, as of 17 October, that the St Michaels Street entrance and the path through Bell Meadow (Public Right of Way 30) are closed on health and safety grounds after flooding, with no reopening date set because repairs may need Scheduled Monument Consent from Historic England.

Our St Albans parking page has the full tariff tables for every council car park in the district, and the roadworks and travel page tracks the closures running across the city this autumn, including the A414 weekend closures at Park Street that push traffic through the centre.

Redbourn fireworks 2026: Saturday 7 November, if the volunteers come forward

Redbourn Common has run a free, volunteer-organised display for about 25 years, and it is the nearest alternative to the city one. This year it clashes with it.

Redbourn Parish Council posted on 24 September 2026 that “the event is scheduled to happen on Saturday 7th November 2026, and simply cannot go ahead this year without more help from the Redbourn Community”. It is recruiting volunteers through a sign-up sheet, and questions go to the deputy clerk on 01582 794832. On 17 October that post was still the latest word: the date is set, but the parish council itself describes the event as conditional.

No 2026 times have been published. The parish council’s dedicated fireworks page still describes the 2025 display, and that is the best guide to the shape:

  • the funfair, run by Philip Green, opened at 5pm on the Common, with food and drink along The Avenue
  • the display started at 7pm
  • roads around the Common closed from 6pm to 8pm, with access only for emergency vehicles; residents of those roads were told to move cars to a side street if they needed to come and go
  • parking at the Cricket Pavilion, with designated disabled parking on Lybury Lane

Entry is free. The event is funded entirely by sponsorship, bucket collections on the night and raffle tickets, which is why there is no ticket page to watch.

If both go ahead, Redbourn’s 7pm start in past years would come half an hour before the 7.30pm display in Verulamium Park, so you cannot see both from the start.

The Redbourn village sign on a post on Redbourn Common, with bare trees and open grass behind
The village sign on Redbourn Common, where the display is held. Photo: Robert Eva (CC BY-SA 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons

Harpenden: Rugby Club fireworks night, Sunday 1 November

Harpenden Town Council runs no fireworks display. Its published autumn and winter 2026 programme goes straight from the Statty Funfair in September to the Remembrance Parade on 8 November.

The town’s display is the one at Harpenden Rugby Club, Redbourn Lane, AL5 2BA, on Sunday 1 November. Tickets are now on sale through the club’s Ticket Tailor page, which gives gates at 3pm, the show at 6pm and a finish at 9.30pm, with a funfair, food village, drinks marquee and entertainment.

Early bird, until midnight on Friday 23 October

  • Adult £12.75
  • Child £7.75
  • Family ticket £36.75

Standard admission

  • Adult £17
  • Child £12
  • Family ticket £42
  • Under 3s free

The listing does not say how many people a family ticket covers.

Getting there: a park and ride from Church Green, outside Chef Peking, is included in the ticket price. On-site parking is in Roberts Field and is only available if you buy it in advance, at £7.50 a car; the club warns the field can be muddy after rain. Limited blue badge parking, for the badge holder plus one carer, is in the main car park and also has to be booked ahead. A quarter of the net value of tickets sold through the club’s community partners goes to them.

Volunteers get a family ticket in return, through volunteers@hrfc.com.

Willows Activity Farm: low-bang fireworks, 6 and 7 November

For families with young children, Willows Activity Farm at London Colney is running Low Bang Fireworks on Friday 6 and Saturday 7 November. Gates open at 6pm with a programme of activities for little ones, and the fireworks start at 7.30pm. (The farm’s page gave 7.15pm when we first checked on 3 October; it now says 7.30pm.) The farm moves its animals away from the firework area for the evening.

Willows’ own warning is worth reading before you book: it is “a low bang display but not no bang”, so use your judgement if your child struggles with noise.

Prices on the farm’s booking site on 17 October:

  • Adult (16 and over): £14.95 online, £15.95 otherwise
  • Child 90cm and over: £14.95 online, £15.95 otherwise
  • Child under 90cm: free
  • Members: £9.95 per adult or child 90cm and over
  • plus a 75p booking fee per ticket, including the free ones

The farm is on Coursers Road, London Colney, AL4 0PF, with free parking, and says spaces are limited. Its Christmas event, the Santa Spectacular, is on our Willows Santa page.

Also on Saturday 7 November

The cathedral is busy twice that day. Pop Up Creative Events runs a Christmas Artisan Market and Art Fair in the nave, listed on its own Eventbrite page as 70-plus artisan stalls with an art exhibition of 22 artists. Saturday entry is £2.50 for adults and free for under-16s; the art fair then stays open free on Sunday 8 November, 12.30pm to 4pm, and Monday 9 November, 9.30am to 5pm. The listing contradicts itself on the Saturday closing time, giving both 5pm and 3pm, so check before making a late trip. More festive dates are on our St Albans Christmas markets page, and the rest of the month’s listings are on what’s on in St Albans.

What is still to come

  • Redbourn: start times for Saturday 7 November, and confirmation that enough volunteers have signed up for it to go ahead.
  • Harpenden Rugby Club: nothing outstanding. Date, times and prices are published.
  • St Albans Fireworks Spectacular: nothing outstanding. Date, times and prices are published; the early bird has ended.

Everything here was checked against organisers’ own published material on 17 October 2026. Dates and prices change; check the organiser before you travel.

Sources