Thanksgiving in Chicago

Chicago is a good place to spend Thanksgiving if cooking a large bird isn't on your agenda. The holiday season starts here the weekend before, so by the time you arrive the lights are up on Michigan Avenue and the Christmas market is open in Daley Plaza. On the day itself there's a parade, a race, and enough open to fill the hours around dinner.

One thing has changed since we first wrote this page. We used to say most tourist attractions stay open on Thanksgiving Day. Most of the big museums don't, so plan the day around what does.

The weekend before: the season starts

The Friday before Thanksgiving, the Christkindlmarket opens in Daley Plaza, and it runs daily until Christmas Eve. (This page used to say it opened the day before Thanksgiving. It opens almost a week earlier.) That same evening, the city lights its official Christmas tree in Millennium Park, and the skating rink beside it is open by then too.

The next day, the Saturday before Thanksgiving, is the Magnificent Mile Lights Festival. There's a free street fair on Michigan Avenue during the day, and in the early evening a parade heads south from Oak Street, lighting up more than a million bulbs in the trees block by block as it passes, with fireworks over the river at the end. It's free, it's very crowded, and you'll be standing still in the cold for a couple of hours, so wear an extra layer. If you're flying in for Thanksgiving, it's worth coming a few days early for this. More on the street in our Magnificent Mile guide.

The night before

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving is one of the biggest bar nights of the year, here as everywhere else. Everyone's home for the holiday and nobody has to work in the morning, so the bars in Wrigleyville, Lincoln Park and River North fill up with people who haven't seen each other since high school. Our nightlife page can point you somewhere. If you'd rather keep it low-key, the Christkindlmarket is a nicer place to spend the evening with a mug of glühwein.

Thanksgiving morning

Turkey Trot. If you want to earn your dinner, Turkey Trot Chicago has been running for close to 50 years. It's a 5K or an 8K run or walk along the lakefront in Lincoln Park, starting just south of Diversey near Cannon Drive, with a kids' run and a tailgate party after. It raises money for the Greater Chicago Food Depository, and you'll need to register ahead.

Chicago Thanksgiving Parade. The Chicago Thanksgiving Parade goes down State Street on Thanksgiving morning. When this page was first written it was the McDonald's Thanksgiving Parade, and it no longer carries that name. The route runs north on State from Ida B. Wells Drive, the street that used to be Congress Parkway, to Randolph Street, and in 2025 it stepped off at 8:45am. It's free, viewing is first come, first served, and you can expect giant character balloons, floats and marching bands. The parade started in 1934, in the middle of the Depression, as a way to get people shopping on State Street again. If it's bitterly cold, it's on local TV (WCIU) and you can watch from your hotel room. Check the parade's site for this year's details.

What's open on the day

Most of the museums close. The Field Museum, the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, the Adler Planetarium and the Art Institute are all closed on Thanksgiving, and Shedd Aquarium has closed on the holiday in past years too. Check its calendar before you head to the Museum Campus.

What you can count on:

• Skydeck at Willis Tower says it's open 365 days a year. 360 CHICAGO in the old Hancock building is open daily too, though it's worth checking holiday hours. The Signature Lounge on the Hancock's 96th floor, which this page used to recommend for a drink with a view, closed in September 2023.
• Lincoln Park Zoo is open every day of the year and always free. A morning walk there pairs well with the Turkey Trot, since the race is in the same park.
• The Christkindlmarket and the Millennium Park rink are both up and running for the holiday weekend. Check their sites for Thanksgiving Day hours.

Dinner out

If you'd rather someone else did the cooking, you have plenty of options, but you have to book. Hotel restaurants downtown are open, and a lot of the city's better restaurants put on a set Thanksgiving menu, usually a few seatings through the afternoon and evening. Plenty of neighborhood places close for the day, and the ones that stay open fill up, so reserve a week or two out and confirm the menu when you do. Chinese restaurants are a good fallback if you didn't plan ahead. Friday is easier. Most restaurants are back to normal hours, and State Street and Michigan Avenue are full of Black Friday shoppers.

Plan for the cold. By the 1991-2020 normals at O'Hare, November averages a high of 48.4°F and a low of 34.1°F, and by Thanksgiving freezing nights are normal. See our weather page and what to wear in Chicago in fall. For the rest of the month, see things to do in Chicago in November and Chicago in November. After that it's Christmas in Chicago, and the whole year is on our holidays and events page.

Photo by photoentropy