When the ball drops on New Year’s Eve in New York, it will sparkle red, white and blue, heralding the year 2026 and kicking off months of celebration for the nation’s upcoming 250th birthday.
Patriotic touches at this year’s Times Square rally, including a second drop of confetti, will offer a first glimpse of what’s to come: hundreds of events and programs, large and smallplanned nationwide on the occasion of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
“I’m telling you right now, whatever you imagine, it’s going to be so much more than that,” he said. America 250 Chairwoman Rosie Rios, who oversees the bipartisan commission created by Congress in 2016 to organize the sesquicentennial. “It will be one for the ages, the most inspiring celebration this country and perhaps the world has ever seen.”
Rios and her group worked with the Times Square Alliance and One Times Square, the building where the ball is dropped, to customize this year’s ceremonies. They are also planning a second ball on July 3, the eve of the nation’s birthday, “in the same beautiful style that Times Square knows how to do,” Rios said.
It will be the first time in 120 years that there will be a ball drop in Times Square that isn’t on New Year’s Eve, she said.
The New Year’s Eve ball was first dropped in Times Square in 1907. The 700-pound (318-kilogram) and 5-foot (1.5-meter) diameter ball was made of iron and wood and contained 100 25-watt light bulbs. Last year, the Constellation Ball, the ninth and largest version, was unveiled. It measured about 12 feet (3.7 meters) in diameter and weighed nearly 12,000 pounds (5,400 kilograms).
The only years when the ball didn’t drop were 1942 and 1943, when the city instituted a nighttime “demout” during World War II to protect itself from attacks. Crowds instead celebrated the new year with a moment of silence followed by chimes running from the base of One Times Square.
The stroke of midnight will also officially launch this year’s America Gives, a national service initiative created by America250. Organizers hope to make 2026 the largest year of volunteer hours ever assembled in the country.
The following day, America250 will participate in the New Year’s Day Rose Parade in Pasadena, California with a float themed “Together Rising for 250 Years”. It will feature three larger-than-life bald eagles representing the country’s past, present and future.
“We want to ring in this new year from sea to shining sea. What better way to think about it than going from New York to California,” Rios said. “This has to be community driven, it has to be local. We go from Guam to Alaska, from Fairbanks to Philadelphia and everything in between.”
President Donald Trump also announced the “Freedom 250” initiative to coordinate other 250th anniversary events.
Rios said she sees the wide variety of celebrations and programs planned for the coming months, from major fireworks displays and statewide potluck dinners to student competitions and civic oral histories, as an opportunity to join the politically divided nation.
“If we can find something for everyone … to have those menu options that people can pick and choose how they want to participate,” she said. “That’s how we get to engage 350 million Americans.”
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