Friesenberg turnip lantern parade: four parades, one square – and the dataset's only torch ban
✓ Checked at the source · as of 21 October 2026
Four groups set off in four neighbourhoods, walk about half an hour each and meet on Friesenbergplatz. Zurich has several such star marches — Friesenberg is the only parade in the calendar run by a housing cooperative, and the only one that says anything at all about torches.
📅 Parade 2026 — when and where
A single Saturday – miss it and you wait a year.
Räbeliechtli-Umzug Friesenberg (Sternmarsch)
✓Saturday, 7 November 2026 · 1 day · 18:00–22:00
- Organiser
- Familienheim-Genossenschaft Zürich (FGZ)
Source: fgzzh.ch · checked on 21 October 2026
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.
- Zurich · FriesenbergRäbeliechtli-Umzug Friesenberg (Sternmarsch)
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🚋 Meeting point & transport
- Meeting point
- Gruppe 1: Station Schweighof der Uetlibergbahn (18:00) · Gruppe 2: Kindergarten Im Rossweidli (18:00) · Gruppe 3: Schulhaus Bachtobel (18:10) · Gruppe 4: Brunnenplatz Adolf-Lüchinger-Strasse (18:10)
- Destination
- Friesenbergplatz
📋 Good to know before you go
- Food and drink
- Festbetrieb auf dem Friesenbergplatz mit Grill, Suppe, heissen und kalten Getränken und Musik
- In bad weather
- Findet bei jeder Witterung statt. Fackeln sind nicht erlaubt.
- Preparation
- Ausgabe der Räben und Verzehrbons für Kinder: Do 5. November 2026, 17–19 Uhr, Friesenbergplatz vor dem Coop.
✨ Highlights on site
What sets this parade apart from every other one is not in its date.
A star march is not a whim but an answer to the terrain. Friesenberg climbs the hillside; a single meeting point would mean half the neighbourhood walking twenty minutes downhill only to climb back up.
The effect is the real reason to come: four chains of light approach the same square from different directions, and in the last few minutes you can already see the others. In Zurich the form is no one-off — Höngg walks with five parades, Affoltern with three, Illnau and Oerlikon with two each.
Two rules make the evening plannable, and the organiser states both explicitly. The parade goes ahead in any weather — unlike Biglen, which cancels in bad weather.
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🎯 Practical tips for the evening
- 1Thu 5 November, 5–7 pm: collect turnips and food vouchersOn Friesenbergplatz in front of the Coop. A two-hour window, two days before the parade — children receive turnip and vouchers together. Miss it and you source both yourself.
🗺️ Nearby parades
In Zurich, turnip lanterns are a neighbourhood matter — and in Friesenberg a cooperative matter: the organiser is the Familienheim-Genossenschaft Zürich, not a neighbourhood association. In the canton of Zurich, the ConvivaPlus calendar lists 12 parades; nationwide 23 entries with 19 documented dates.
7 November 2026 is one of the densest evenings: besides Friesenberg, 5 further parades in the calendar set off. The densest evening of the season is 7 November 2026 with 6 simultaneous parades — a figure from the ConvivaPlus analysis that exists only because every date was read at a first-hand source (organiser or municipality).
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
Hollowed-out turnips and lanterns with a candle or LED are the norm. An open flame on a stick is a different matter: the Friesenberg organiser rules torches out explicitly — the only recorded organiser to do so. Elsewhere it is better to ask than to rely on a silence.
The ConvivaPlus verdict
The recommendation is unreserved, with one practical condition: you need to know in advance which of the four starts is yours. Skip that and you are standing at one point at 6:00 pm while your part of the neighbourhood sets off ten minutes later somewhere else.
When we last checked: Starting points, times, the turnip handout and the torch ban come from the FGZ (as of 10 September 2026). Whether the handout is limited to cooperative members is not published — ask beforehand if in doubt.
Check the latest: ConvivaPlus Turnip Lantern Dataset 2026 – Zurich · Friesenberg →
- ◆The torch ban is the only rule of its kind in the whole dataset. No other recorded organiser says anything about open flame — neither yes nor no. That does not mean torches are welcome elsewhere; it means you set out without an answer. The FGZ answers the question before anyone asks it.
🗓️ At the same time in the canton of Zurich
How we check
According to the ConvivaPlus calendar, 9 of the 19 confirmed events this season start earlier than this one and 4 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.
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Four parades, one destination: a star march from four residential areas, each about half an hour on foot.
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🏮 Turnip lantern parade · 10 September 2026