The installation debuts Monday, January 12, 2026, featuring rotating digital artworks projected nightly onto a 95-foot-high section of the building's facade from sundown to 10 pm. The launch coincides with the start of JPM Week, when tens of thousands of people are expected downtown for the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference and related events. The illuminated facade faces both Market Street and Yerba Buena Lane, transforming a previously blank wall of the 1908 Beaux-Arts building into a permanent canvas for public art.
San Francisco City Hall has debuted a brand new holiday installation: City Hall Winter Lights, a free projection mapping show that turns both the Polk Street and Van Ness Avenue sides of the building into a giant animated storybook. The month-long display runs nightly through December 30, with shows every 30 minutes from 5:30 PM to midnight. Each sequence lasts about ten minutes and features a synchronized musical soundtrack that you can stream directly on your phone.
"We put the entire audience inside of the set with projections," festival director Michael Rossi says. "Last year, we did a 'space symphony,' consisting of Gustav Holst's 'The Planets.' It was basically like a Disney ride where the audience was flying from one planet to the other and the whole room was moving with those projections. And that was so popular that we ran for over seven weeks."