Winter ended only a few weeks ago, but city officials are already busy planning Mississauga’s next Santa Claus parade set to take place in November.
Just over four months removed from what the City of Mississauga described as a “highly successful” 2025 Christmastime spectacle, in which the annual parade returned to Mississauga’s downtown core near Square One for the first time in almost 25 years, the mayor and council will talk this week about the next parade.
The 2026 Santa Claus parade is scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 21 and it will once again be held in the City Centre area, city staff said in a report to be discussed at Wednesday’s general committee meeting. It will likely again be staged at night and in conjunction with the annual Christmas tree lighting event at Celebration Square.
The report from Mississauga’s community services commissioner Raj Sheth lays out a framework with which to proceed with plans for the 2026 event and asks that $200,000 from the city’s Municipal Accommodations Tax reserve fund again help fund the large parade.
The city’s MAT fund collects money via visitors to Mississauga paying a six per cent tax during short-term stays.
The report to be presented on Wednesday noted the “2025 Santa Claus parade was highly successful, offering significant community benefit and bolstering activity at downtown businesses.”
Following the holiday event, “Square One Shopping Centre reported an influx of 7,000-10,000 visitors, with anecdotal evidence of increased business at downtown restaurants on parade day,” the report stated.
Sheth added in his report last November’s parade “demonstrated its potential as a signature winter experience” that can continue for years to come.
“The 2025 Santa Claus parade delivered positive results and confirmed community interest in continuing this new signature initiative,” he said.
Planning for the 2026 Christmas parade is already underway, the city said, noting community partners across Mississauga in addition to the city’s tourism department and Oxford Properties, which manages Square One, have already been engaged in discussion.
The 2025 nighttime parade drew some 40,000 people to the City Centre area next to Square One Shopping Centre to witness 58 floats, five marching bands and hundreds of other participants decked out in festive costumes make their way through the decorated streets surrounding city hall.
Many also turned out for the annual Light Up the Square event at Celebration Square, which was held in conjunction with the main attraction.
Mayor Carolyn Parrish told INsauga.com in an interview shortly afterward that turnout for the parade — the first held in the downtown core since 2001 — was about “twice as many people as we expected.”
The mayor, who earlier in 2025 began brainstorming the idea to bring the Santa Claus parade back to the city’s downtown core after an absence of more than two decades, also said at the time while she was extremely happy with how things turned out, she already had a few ideas about how to make the 2026 parade even better.
Starting at Rathburn Road and Living Arts Drive, the 2025 parade travelled along Living Arts Drive, turned left onto City Centre Drive and finished at City Centre Drive and Kariya Gate.
In its early years decades ago, the Mississauga Santa Claus parade used various routes along sections of both Burnhamthorpe Road and Hurontario Street, ending at Square One.
(Cover photo: City of Mississauga)
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