Bonfire night is Thursday 5 November. Kendal Rugby Club has no 2026 display on sale; Low Wood Bay's 7.30pm show is £12.50, but its bonfire dinner has sold out.

Bonfire night 2026 falls on Thursday 5 November, which is awkward: a midweek fifth pushes most club displays onto the Friday or the Saturday, and this year those are 6 and 7 November.

As of 30 September 2026, no fireworks display in Kendal itself has been announced. One display in the district is confirmed and on sale.

Updated 30 September: Low Wood Bay’s bonfire dinner is now sold out and its child price is published at £15. Kendal Rugby Club’s booking page now shows last year’s display, Friday 7 November 2025, as closed, with no 2026 date. Here is what each source actually says, so you can see the difference between a display that exists and a listing that has been sitting there since 2018.

The one confirmed display: Low Wood Bay, Windermere

English Lakes has published its 2026 bonfire night event at Low Wood Bay Resort & Spa, Ambleside Road, Windermere LA23 1LP, on Thursday 5 November 2026. The display itself runs 7.30pm to 7.45pm.

Option Price Detail
Gallery Lounge £12.50 per person Arrival from 6pm, parking in the Watersports Car Park
The W Bonfire Dinner £37.50 adult, £15 child up to 12 Sold out on 30 September. Seatings were 6pm and 7pm

Overnight packages with rooftop terrace viewing or a spa thermal journey are also listed. Bookings go through weddings.lowwood@englishlakes.co.uk or 015394 39479. This is a resort event on private grounds rather than a free community display, and it is ticketed throughout.

Kendal Rugby Club: the town’s usual display, not yet on sale

Kendal’s big community fireworks night is normally the rugby club’s, at Mint Bridge, Shap Road, LA9 6NY. Three checks, first on 4 September and again on 30 September 2026, all came back empty:

  • The club’s TryBooking page for “Community Fireworks at Kendal Rugby Club” said “This event has no dates available for booking” on 4 September. By 30 September it had switched to showing last year’s event, Friday 7 November 2025, 5pm to 10pm, marked “CLOSED”, with “Bookings for this event are currently closed”. There is no 2026 date on it.
  • The club’s news list carries two items, a pre-season update and a Six Nations 2027 ticket ballot. Nothing about fireworks.
  • The club’s event calendar for both October and November 2026 is empty.

The most recent display we can date from a first-party listing is now Friday 7 November 2025, from the club’s own booking page: gates at 5pm, the display at 7.30pm, food vendors and stalls, and VIP tickets with clubhouse, balcony and Lounge Bar access, supper and a glass of mulled wine. The one before was Friday 8 November 2024, listed by Visit Kendal as running 5pm to 11pm. From the club’s last published fireworks notice, the shape of the night was: gates at 5pm, display at 7.30pm, £3 per person in advance and £4 on the gate, under-3s free, card and cash accepted, a funfair on site, a strict no-sparkler policy, and crucially no parking at the ground at all, with nearby supermarket car parks tolerating a three-hour stay.

None of that is a 2026 commitment. Treat it as the pattern to expect if the club announces, not as this year’s plan. The club has skipped a year before: a notice titled “No fireworks at the club this year, sorry” was published on its site and archived on 1 November 2021.

Windermere Rugby Club, the other large display in the area, at Dawes Meadow in Bowness, has published nothing either. Its news feed returns “Sorry, there are no news items”, and its October and November 2026 calendars are both empty.

Two listings not to trust

If a search sent you to either of these, they are the reason this page exists.

Visit Kendal’s “Autumn nights” page still lists a Mintbridge display where “This year’s display will honour Remembrance Day as 2018 marks 100 years”. That dates the page to 2018. Every date on it is eight years old.

The Lake District’s bonfire night page lists 17 venues across Cumbria, including a Kendal Castle display, but attaches no date and no year to any of them, using phrases like “on or around the 5th of November”. The page says outright that “it is almost impossible to put together a list of all the bonfires taking place each year”. It is a list of places that have held displays at some point, not a diary.

Road closures

No temporary traffic regulation order for any bonfire or fireworks event had been advertised on the Public Notice Portal for the Kendal postcodes when we checked on 4 September 2026. The most recent Westmorland and Furness traffic notice, dated 3 September, covers utility works at Skelwith Bridge and a 20-metre closure off Blackhall Road in Kendal, with no diversion available for that one, from 10 September for about a day.

If a display is announced and needs the road shut, it has to be advertised as a statutory notice first, so the portal is where it will show up. We will add it here when it does. For everything currently shut, see roadworks and travel.

Where to park

Mint Bridge has no visitor parking. Everything else means parking in town and walking or driving out, and there is no free council car park in Kendal, Windermere, Bowness, Ambleside, Grange-over-Sands or Kirkby Lonsdale. Evening charging differs by car park, and Parish Church starts charging at 6am. The tariffs are on our parking page.

What we are watching

  • Kendal Rugby Club, whose TryBooking listing is the first place a 2026 date would appear, because that is where tickets went on sale last year. Two Friday displays in a row point to Friday 6 November 2026 if the pattern holds, but the club has not said so.
  • Windermere Rugby Club, via its own club pages.
  • The Public Notice Portal, for any event closure order.

We check these weekly through October and will update this page the day anything is announced. Until then, the only Kendal-area display you can book is Low Wood Bay’s. For everything else happening in town this autumn, see things to do in Kendal.