Carol services and Christmas concerts in Florida, 2026

By the ULTIMATE Florida Editorial Team

Bethesda-by-the-Sea, Palm Beach

The Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea, on South County Road, gives Palm Beach its Christmas music. Its Christmas Concert is on Wednesday 16 December at 7pm: the Bethesda Choir with orchestra, carols for the audience to sing, and afterwards a tree-lighting reception with Christmas cookies and Champagne. Tickets are sold through the church.

On Christmas Eve there is a Christmas Pageant and Eucharist at 4pm, then Festal Eucharists with choir and instruments at 7pm and 10pm, each with a prelude 25 minutes before. Christmas Day has a sung Eucharist at 11am, and Christmas Lessons and Carols follows on Sunday 27 December at 11am.

The season closes with the Boar’s Head and Yule Log Festival, performed here since 1977: more than 160 players, the Bethesda Choir and the Palm Beach Pipes and Drums, in an old English pageant of lords, jesters and beefeaters. It is on Saturday 2 January 2027 at 3.30pm and Sunday 3 January at 2pm and 4.30pm; tickets go on sale online a few weeks before, and at the door until sold out.

Our advice: Christmas services fill the nave, with overflow seating in the Parish Hall and the Garth; if you want to be inside the church, arrive early.

Bethesda-by-the-Sea: Christmas Concert →   Bethesda-by-the-Sea: Christmas services →   Bethesda-by-the-Sea: Boar’s Head Festival →

Orlando: EPCOT’s Candlelight Processional

The best-loved Christmas concert in Orlando is in a theme park. EPCOT’s Candlelight Processional retells the Christmas story with a celebrity narrator, a massed choir, a 50-piece orchestra, herald trumpets and the Voices of Liberty, nightly from 27 November to 30 December at 4.45pm, 6.30pm and 8pm in the America Gardens Theatre.

The narrators change every few nights: among them Gary Sinise (29 November–1 December), Josh Groban (13–14 December), Henry Winkler (20–21 December), Jodi Benson on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and Eva Longoria to close (28–30 December).

Our advice: seats go fast; a Candlelight Processional dining package, booked through Disney, guarantees one.

EPCOT: Candlelight Processional →

St. Augustine: Lessons and Carols in the First Parish

The Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine, the mother church of the nation’s first Catholic parish, founded in 1565, sings A Service of Lessons and Carols with its Cathedral Choirs on Friday 4 December at 6pm, as part of its First Friday concert series. Doors open at 5.30pm; entry is free, with a suggested $10 donation.

Our advice: the concert is in the cathedral’s own series rather than a ticketed event; arrive by 5.30pm for a good seat, then walk the lit streets of the old town.

Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine: Music schedule →   Christmas in Florida →

Key West: Keys Choral Arts

Keys Choral Arts, a chorus of singers from Marathon to Key West, gives two Christmas performances in 2026: at the Eaton Street Stroll on Sunday 6 December in Williams Hall, and its Holiday Concert on Tuesday 15 December in the Basilica of St. Mary Star of the Sea. Times and ticket links were still to be published when we checked.

Our advice: the Eaton Street Stroll is Old Town’s Christmas walk; go at dusk.

Keys Choral Arts →

Christmas concerts at the Kravis Center

In West Palm Beach, the Kravis Center’s Dreyfoos Concert Hall has a Christmas season of its own: Dave Koz and Friends on Wednesday 2 December, Leslie Odom, Jr.’s Christmas Tour on Tuesday 15 December and The Tenors’ Season of Hope Tour on Thursday 17 December, all at 7.30pm.

Our advice: Christmas Day 2026 is a Friday, so the carol services cluster on the weekend of 19 and 20 December and on Christmas Eve. Check each church’s own page in the week before you go, as times can change.

Kravis Center: Holiday performances →

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