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It’s heat wave season, but Portland Winter Light Festival organizers are already thinking of chillier nights ahead. PDXWLF announced its 2025 festival, to be held Feb. 7–15. The annual gathering will be its 10th festival, capping off a decade of free luminous art installations spread out across the city. Its optimistic theme, “A Light for Tomorrow,” nods both to the short days and long nights of winter, and the creeping darkness that has infected our present moment.
In their July 10 announcement, PDXWLF organizers also set out a call for next year’s featured artists. The call is open not only to visual artists, but also performers and a wider array of creatives, like architecture and design firms.
Last year’s festival displayed nearly 160 installations by more than 400 artists, who used everything from LED panels to belching flames to illuminate their work. Even though there is no cover charge, organizers estimate that PDXWLF contributed $10 million to the local economy last year. Along with deep-pocketed donors like Google, Alaska Airlines and Portland General Electric, projects from architecture and design firms are also subject to a $300 exhibition fee once selected.
“The Light Festival, like no other, galvanizes the public around art, creativity, and community,” Alisha Sullivan, executive director of the Willamette Light Brigade, the nonprofit arts organization responsible for PDXWLF, stated in a press release. “This year we celebrate our 10th anniversary and how art, particularly accessible, playful, light-based art, can lead to positive invigoration for Portland in the winter when we need it most.”
PDXWLF’s themes aren’t always rigid. Even with last year’s oceanic theme, sci-fi sculptures featuring a robot, a UFO and a blooming, flaming flower were prominently displayed downtown. And though the festival wrapped up months ago, remnants of the 2024 show are still activating downtown Portland.
FATHOM, a sprawling, tactile exhibit debuted in February by the art collective Roboto Octopodo—comprising former and current PDXWLF organizers—reopened in May at four times its original size. FATHOM still attracts visitors with features like a scavenger hunt and generous air conditioning. Just weeks later, Portland’s Bureau of Transportation and Environment Management Office jointly announced that Nautilus Deep Sea, an iridescent metal sculpture that debuted at the Salmon Springs Fountain on the waterfront, would display at Pride Plaza on Southwest 12th Avenue and Harvey Milk Street until August, when another sculpture will take its place.