Oerlikon's Turnip Lantern Parade: Two Routes – and the Choice Is Not a Matter of Taste
✓ Checked at the source · as of 21 October 2026
Most lantern parades have one meeting point and one route. Oerlikon has two, they set off fifteen minutes apart from different places, and one is accompanied by drummers while the other sings before moving off. Not knowing that means waiting in the wrong park.
📅 Parade 2026 — when and where
A single Friday – miss it and you wait a year.
Oerliker Räbeliechtliumzug
✓Friday, 6 November 2026 · 1 day · 18:30–19:30
- Organiser
- Quartierverein Zürich-Oerlikon
Source: qv-oerlikon.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 · OerlikonOerliker Räbeliechtliumzug
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🚋 Meeting point & transport
- Assembly
- 18:15 (grosse Route) · 18:30 (kleine Route)
- Meeting point
- Grosse Route: MFO-Park · Kleine Route: Wiese beim Schulhaus Baumacker (neben dem GZ)
- Destination
- Liguster Sportplatz (Ankunft beider Gruppen ca. 19:30)
✨ Highlights on site
What sets this parade apart from every other one is not in its date.
A lantern parade is normally a decision-free affair: you turn up, you walk, you go home. In Oerlikon there is a real choice at the start — and it gets underestimated at kitchen tables because in a calendar it looks like a footnote.
The long route has drummers. That is why eight-year-olds love it and three-year-olds want carrying after ten minutes: drums are loud, the pace is brisk, the procession is longer. The short route does the opposite — it opens with communal singing on the meadow by Baumacker school, runs shorter and slower, and starts a quarter of an hour later, which for families still doing supper makes all the difference.
Which route will you take?
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🎯 Practical tips for the evening
The route choice decides the evening.
- 1The MFO-Park is larger by night than it looks by dayAs a landmark it is unmistakable, but it is broad and hard to read in the dark. For a first visit: don't stop at the entrance, walk to where the lanterns are.
🗺️ Nearby parades
In Zurich, lantern parades are a neighbourhood matter, not a city one: there is no «City of Zurich parade», there is the Oerlikon one, the Oberstrass one, the Albisrieden one. In the canton of Zurich the ConvivaPlus calendar lists 12 parades; nationwide, 23 entries with 19 documented dates.
6 November 2026 is one of the busiest evenings of the season: besides Oerlikon, 4 other parades in the calendar set off that night. The densest evening overall is 7 November 2026, with 6 parades at once. That figure comes from the ConvivaPlus calendar and can only be calculated because every date was read individually at a first-hand source (organiser or municipality) — never carried over from last year.
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
The calendar lists 12 parades for the canton of Zurich, among them several Zurich neighbourhoods each with its own organiser and date.
7 November 2026, with 6 parades in the calendar at once – the densest point of the season, which runs from 30 October 2026 to 28 November 2026.
The ConvivaPlus verdict
Oerlikon solves a problem almost every parade has and almost none tackles: children four years apart do not want the same evening. Two routes at different paces with a shared arrival is the best arrangement we have seen in this calendar.
The price is a decision made in advance — and that is exactly where the evening fails if nobody makes it. Heading to the MFO-Park unthinkingly because it is the better-known landmark means ending up with a three-year-old behind drums.
When we last checked: Times and meeting points come from the organiser's site (as of 10 September 2026). In rain the Quartierverein decides at short notice — check before setting off.
Check the latest: ConvivaPlus Turnip Lantern Dataset 2026 – Zurich · Oerlikon →
- ◆Why «turnip lantern parade Zurich» misleads: there is no city parade. There is the Oerlikon one, the Oberstrass one, the Albisrieden one — each with its own association, route and evening. Search for the city and you find the wrong one, or none.
- ◆It only starts at 18:30 – an evening outing.
🗓️ At the same time in the canton of Zurich
How we check
According to the ConvivaPlus calendar, 4 of the 19 confirmed events this season start earlier than this one and 10 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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Oerlikon lets two groups set off separately and arrive together – the cleanest answer in the whole calendar for siblings with a big age gap.
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🏮 Turnip lantern parade · 10 September 2026