Räbechilbi Richterswil: The World's Largest Turnip Lantern Parade — and the Only One You Pay For
✓ Checked at the source · as of 11 September 2026
Twenty-one of the recorded turnip lantern parades cost nothing. You turn up, you walk, you go home. In Richterswil there is a price tag in front of the evening: ten francs, cash only, and wearing the badge is compulsory. That is not a souvenir stall. It is the ticket to the largest turnip lantern parade in the world.
📅 Parade 2026 — when and where
A single Saturday – miss it and you wait a year.
Räbechilbi Richterswil
✓Saturday, 14 November 2026 · 1 day · 18:00
- Organiser
- Arbeitsgruppe Räbechilbi, Verkehrs- und Verschönerungsverein Richterswil
Source: vvrs.ch · checked on 11 September 2026
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Calculated from the ConvivaPlus dataset — every date with its own source above.
📋 Good to know before you go
- Preparation
- Räbenverkauf: Sa 31. Oktober 2026, 9–16 Uhr.
- From 3 p.m. there are market stalls, open-air concerts and attractions in the old village centre.
- Come by S2 or S8 – the route runs right beside Richterswil station, and there is no parking.
- The festival badge at CHF 10.– or the plaque at CHF 15.– is compulsory – wearing it is required, sold for cash only.
✨ Highlights on site
What sets this parade apart from every other one is not in its date.
The fair starts at 15:00, the parade at 18:00, and it ends at 21:00. Read «turnip lantern parade Richterswil», turn up at the station at 17:50, and you have missed three hours of market stalls, open-air concerts and attractions, arriving in a village that has been full for hours. In every other entry in this calendar the parade is the event. Here it is the closing act.
Ten francs for a compulsory badge – what do you think?
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🎯 Practical tips for the evening
- 1Carving your own turnip: 31 OctoberThe turnip sale takes place on Saturday, 31 October 2026, from 9:00 to 16:00 – two weeks before the parade. If you want to carry your own turnip, pencil in that Saturday; one hollowed out in early November will not survive until the 14th.
📊 Season comparison with nearby villages
None of the 2 neighbours in the chart ends later.
Each bar is a documented evening. Dark = this parade, light = the nearest ones. A parade lasts an hour and often falls on the same evening as another — read only a date and you miss that the next village sets off at the same minute.
- RichterswilRäbechilbi Richterswil
🗺️ Nearby parades
Richterswil closes the season: the ConvivaPlus calendar lists 23 parades, 19 of them with a verified date, and this is the last of those — the season ends on 28 November 2026, having begun on 30 October 2026. In the canton of Zurich, the calendar lists 12 parades.
On 14 November 2026 not a single other parade in the dataset sets off. The busiest evening, 7 November 2026 with 6 simultaneous parades, falls a week earlier. That is not chance but a rule: the organiser fixes the Räbechilbi on the second Saturday in November. Together with Albisrieden, Richterswil is one of only two entries in the calendar where a rule and a verified date stand side by side. In the other six entries carrying a rule, that field holds a rule or a note — but no date for 2026.
More turnip lantern parades in the canton of Zurich
All of the canton of Zurich →❓ FAQ — answered
Answers from the verified dataset – no date is carried over from last year.
People also ask
Related questions from our magazine
A turnip lantern parade is the procession itself, usually an hour.
The ConvivaPlus verdict
If you want to see exactly one turnip lantern event this season, this is it — and we say so this bluntly with some reluctance, because it does an injustice to the small neighbourhood parades, which achieve something else entirely.
Two caveats that appear on no poster.
When we last checked: Date, start time, number of floats, fair hours and badge prices were re-read on 11 September 2026 at vvrs.ch and at the Zurich transport authority. The title «world's largest» comes from the Guinness Book of Records 2000 and is carried forward by the ZVV – there is no continuously maintained world ranking of turnip lantern parades.
Check the latest: ConvivaPlus Turnip Lantern Dataset 2026 – Richterswil →
- ◆The badge is the real story: what is remarkable is not the price but that it is the only one. 23 parades in the calendar, twenty-one times no till — and once an obligation to wear. Anyone who wants to understand why a custom becomes a festival with a budget in one place and stays a parents' evening in twenty others will find the difference precisely here.
- ◆The rule outranks the date: Richterswil is one of only two entries in this calendar where a rule and a verified date stand side by side — «the second Saturday in November» plus the confirmed 14 November 2026. In practice that means you can put this evening in your calendar as a repeat and never search for it again. Six further entries carry only the rule, and that is a different thing from a date.
🗓️ At the same time in the canton of Zurich
How we check
According to the ConvivaPlus calendar, 17 of the 19 confirmed events this season start earlier than this one and one later.
Every date comes from the organiser's, the municipality's or the canton's own site — never from an aggregator, never copied over from last year. Next to each source is the date we last read it.
Something missing or changed? A note below is enough; we check it at the source.
ConvivaPlus Editor · Family & Day Trips
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🏮 Turnip lantern parade · 11 September 2026