What's on around Kansas City in November 2026

The National WWI Museum and Memorial turns 100 this year, and the light show it has been putting on the Liberty Memorial on weekend evenings ends on Veterans Day. Two weeks after that, Jackson County switches on the 39th Christmas in the Park at Longview Lake, free to drive through, open nightly until New Year's Eve.

November around Kansas City opens with the general election on the 3rd and Veterans Day weekend at the Liberty Memorial. It closes with the Plaza lights on, Christmas in the Park running nightly at Longview Lake, and the Nutcracker at the Kauffman Center.

I confirmed every date below for 2026 with the organizer's own page, the venue, the county parks department, the election board or the city visitor bureau, and each source is linked beside the item. Anything I could only find on a previous year's listing was left out, and there is a section further down naming which ones those were.

I'm Jeff Moran, NMLS #483943, a mortgage broker licensed in Missouri through C2 Financial Corporation, and I have been in the mortgage business since 1996. I work out of Bluffton, South Carolina, so nothing here is a first-hand claim about Kansas City. I checked all of it on October 22, 2026. If you are looking at homes in these counties this fall, the Kansas City area buyer's guide covers the cities, the tax bills and the earnings tax that go with them.

This page covers the Missouri side: Jackson, Clay, Cass, Platte, Lafayette, Ray, Clinton, Bates and Caldwell counties. Johnson County, Wyandotte County and the rest of the Kansas half of the same market have their own guide at Kansas City on the Kansas side. A few things that locals treat as part of the same market are in that one instead.

The first week: a centennial party, two conventions and a board-game weekend

Liberty's Beacon is the centennial light installation projected on the Liberty Memorial tower, the North Wall and the Great Frieze, and the museum's events calendar has it running on weekend evenings at 7:30 through Veterans Day, November 11. It is free and needs no ticket, it marks the Memorial's first hundred years, and the 11th is the last night of it.

The museum's own birthday party, Operation: Us, is on Thursday, November 5 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on the lawn above Pershing Road that Kansas City calls its Front Porch. The museum's page for it has the hours and the ticket terms, and it is an event for people 18 and older.

Downtown, the Jonas Brothers play T-Mobile Center on Tuesday, November 3, which the arena's event page puts at 7:30 p.m. Garth Brooks follows on Friday and Saturday, November 6 and 7, and his arena page added a Saturday matinee.

The Kansas City Convention Center's own calendar carries three conventions that first weekend. The Meeple-A-Thon board-gaming convention runs from November 6 to 8 in the Bartle exhibit hall on West 13th Street, and DFSCON, a literary convention, is on November 7 and 8 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Kansas City Pet Fest is on the same calendar but not in the same building. It runs from 4 p.m. on November 6 to 8 p.m. on November 7 at Hale Arena, in the American Royal Center on American Royal Court.

Up in the Northland, Winter Magic opens at Platte Purchase Park on North Platte Purchase Drive on Wednesday, November 4 and runs nightly to January 2, 2027. Its 2026 experience page has the dates and the timed half-hour entry slots, its FAQ puts the nightly hours at 6 to 9 p.m., and it opens two weeks before any other holiday light display on this page.

Tuesday the 3rd is the general election, and one county question is a sales tax renewal

Election day is Tuesday, November 3. Kansas City residents inside Jackson County vote under the Kansas City Election Board, and the rest of the county votes under the Jackson County board. No-excuse in-person absentee voting runs from October 20 through November 2, and the deadline to apply for a ballot by mail was 5 p.m. on October 21.

Jackson County voters also decide COMBAT Question 1, a renewal of the county's quarter-cent anti-crime sales tax. KCUR's guide to that question reports that a yes vote extends the tax ten years to March 2037 and a no vote lets it end in March 2027. Voters first approved it in 1989 and last renewed it in 2016. I am not taking a position on it.

Missouri voters also decide statewide measures, and the Secretary of State's 2026 ballot measures page is the official list, with the full ballot title and the fiscal note for each one. Watch out for the roundups here. Some of them still carry the state parks and soils sales tax renewal as a November item. The Secretary of State put that one on the August 4 primary ballot, which has already come and gone. Your own sample ballot from the election board tells you more than any roundup, mine included.

A sales tax never shows up in a monthly mortgage payment the way a property tax does. Escrow accounts explains which bills a lender collects monthly and which ones stay yours to pay directly, That difference is what separates two homes in two different taxing districts when you put their monthly costs side by side.

Veterans Day weekend at the Liberty Memorial

Veterans Day is Wednesday, November 11, and the museum runs a week around it. Its Veterans Day page has free programming from November 6 through 11, including research stations and a Vietnam-era Huey helicopter parked on the U-shaped drive from the 6th to the 8th. The free public ceremony is at 10 a.m. on the 11th in the auditorium and lobby. The museum is closed on Tuesday the 10th.

If you are buying here with a VA loan, VA loans in Missouri covers how the program works across the state.

The Jets at Arrowhead on the 8th, and the ice goes in at Crown Center on the 6th

The Chiefs host the New York Jets at noon on Sunday, November 8, and the team's schedule release has it as one of only two home dates in the month. A noon kickoff at the Truman Sports Complex in east Jackson County fills I-70 both ways for most of the morning, and that same stretch of I-70 closes for most of 2027.

The Crown Center Ice Terrace opens two days earlier, on Friday, November 6, in its 54th season. Crown Center's own opening day page has a free skate from 6 to 9 a.m. that day on the outdoor rink on Grand Boulevard, and its rink page runs the season to March 14. Visit KC's annual events list gives November 8 for the opening and Crown Center's own two pages give the 6th, so I went with the 6th.

Three Days Grace plays T-Mobile Center the following night, Monday the 9th, at 7 p.m., which the arena's page confirms.

Figaro at the Lyric, and a free Thursday concert at Helzberg Hall

The Lyric Opera of Kansas City stages Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro at the Kauffman Center on Broadway Boulevard, sung in Italian with English translations above the stage. The company's own page for the production gives three performances: Saturday, November 7 and Friday, November 13 at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, November 15 at 2 p.m. The company also holds an Opera Dives Deep talk on Monday, November 2 at its production arts building.

The Kansas City Symphony plays a free Happy Hour concert in Helzberg Hall on Thursday, November 12 at 6 p.m., with the Brandmeyer Great Hall lobby open from 5. The orchestra's Happy Hour page calls that night Beethoven, Brahms, and the Romantic Spirit, a one-hour program played by the orchestra's own musicians, and the free tickets are reserved in advance.

MercyMe plays T-Mobile Center on Saturday the 14th and The Neighbourhood on Monday the 16th, both at 7 p.m. and both on the arena's events list. The Kansas City Bridal and Wedding Expo takes Bartle Hall on Sunday the 15th, from 1 to 5 p.m.

The Plaza lights come on the 19th

Visit KC's annual events list has the Evergy Plaza Lights season on the Country Club Plaza running from November 19 to January 3, 2027. None of the listings I found puts a bulb count on this year's display, so I am not putting a number on it either.

The lighting ceremony is a separate event from the season, and the same list carries the ceremony date as still to be announced. It has fallen on Thanksgiving night in past years, with fireworks and a live television broadcast, and the 2026 date had not been published when I checked. That same list is where it will appear once the Plaza announces it.

Friday the 20th: Lee's Summit, Independence Square and Union Station

Three things open on the same Friday in three different Jackson County towns.

Downtown Lee's Summit lights its tree on Green Street from 5 to 8:30 p.m. The Downtown Lee's Summit listing has the doors at 5 and the program and the lighting at 6. It also names a new 45-foot tree, vendor booths, and free activities for children with photos with Santa from 6:30 to 8:30.

Independence lights its own square the same evening from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Visit KC's listing has it free, with the ceremony at 6 and the lights on at 6:30.

Holiday Reflections opens inside Union Station on Pershing Road and runs to January 4, 2027. The station's event page has the window.

Sunday the 22nd: a bike ride through the lights, and the Cardinals at Arrowhead

Jackson County opens the Christmas in the Park route to bicycles for one evening before the cars get it. Trip the Light Fantastic is on Sunday, November 22 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at Longview Lake, three nights before the drive-through opens.

The Chiefs host the Arizona Cardinals at noon the same day, their second and last home date of the month. The 28.5 Hoops women's basketball invitational runs all day at T-Mobile Center, four games from 11 a.m., which the arena's page for it lists.

Thanksgiving week

Thanksgiving is Thursday, November 26. The Chiefs are in Buffalo that night, so there is no game at Arrowhead over the holiday.

The Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce holds its annual dinner at the convention center on Tuesday the 24th, from 5 to 9 p.m. on the venue's social events calendar.

Jackson County's two Longview Lake events run back to back on the Wednesday before. Christmas in the Sky is a fireworks show at Longview Lake Beach on Raytown Road from 5 to 7:30 p.m. on November 25, and it is the kickoff for the drive.

Christmas in the Park is in its 39th year and opens that same night. Jackson County Parks and Recreation has it running nightly from November 25 to December 31, from 5:30 to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and from 5:30 to 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Admission is free with a voluntary donation on the way out, and the route starts at the Frank White Jr. Softball Complex and runs through the Longview Lake Campground. The county puts the clearance at about 14 feet for anybody driving something tall.

Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey takes T-Mobile Center from Friday the 27th through Sunday the 29th. The arena's announcement has shows at noon and 4 p.m. on Friday and at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, and a portion of the Kansas City ticket sales going to Children's Mercy.

Kansas City Ballet opens The Nutcracker at the Kauffman Center on Saturday, November 28 and runs it to December 24, which the company's own page for the production confirms.

The farmers market at the City Market, and the week it changes

The City Market in the River Market runs its farmers market through the winter rather than closing for it, and the schedule changes once in November. The market's own farmers market page has November and December on Saturdays and Sundays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Its events page then has the Merry Market taking over on the weekends between Thanksgiving and Christmas, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., free, running through December 20.

That gives you the ordinary market on the weekends of November 1, 7 and 8, 14 and 15, and 21 and 22, then the Merry Market hours from the 28th, which is the first of those weekends in 2026. The weekend dates printed beside the Merry Market hours are last year's. A separate market page gives 8 a.m. as the opening time, and that one is describing the regular season rather than November. Check the market's own pages if you are going early.

Dates I could not confirm for 2026

Several things turn up on November lists around here and are not in the dated list above, because this year's date never came from the organizer or the venue.

The Plaza lighting ceremony is covered in the section above. The season is confirmed from November 19, and the ceremony itself is listed as to be announced.

Día de los Muertos festivals run at the Nelson-Atkins, the Kansas City Museum and the Mattie Rhodes Center in most years, and no 2026 date came back for any of them from the organizers themselves. The listings I found describe earlier years.

Parkville's Christmas on the River and its Mayor's tree lighting turned up only on prior-year listings. The Buck O'Neil birthday celebration at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum is carried as to be announced on Visit KC's own annual events list. A different Visit KC listing has it on November 14, so the museum is the place to ask.

A Kansas City Current home playoff match cannot be listed yet. The league's own 2026 calendar puts the quarterfinals on November 6 to 8 and the semifinals on the 14th and 15th. The higher seed hosts both rounds, so whether CPKC Stadium gets one of them depends on seeding that was not settled when I checked.

Two Kansas City Symphony programs, the Studio Ghibli concert and the Brahms German Requiem, came back on conflicting dates, so neither is in the list. T-Mobile Center's summary pages also disagree with its own event pages on more than one November date, the 28.5 Hoops day and the MercyMe night among them, and where they disagreed I went with the event's own page.

Two confirmed things are left out because of geography. The Evergy Festival of Lights at Powell Gardens runs on select evenings from November 19 to January 3, 2027, and the garden is at Kingsville, which is in Johnson County, Missouri, outside the nine counties this page covers. The Holiday Boutique at the Overland Park Convention Center, November 18 to 22, is on the Kansas side, in Johnson County, Kansas.

The I-70 closure that starts in January

MoDOT is rebuilding I-70 through Kansas City, and a four-mile stretch of it closes in both directions for about eleven months. The closure starts after this month rather than during it. KCTV5 reported in October that it begins January 11, 2027, weather permitting, and runs into mid-December 2027. MoDOT's own phasing puts the closed stretch between The Paseo and Van Brunt Boulevard and says closing both directions at once gets the work done faster than lane closures would. The whole $237 million Improve I-70 project, 15 bridges replaced and seven more rehabilitated, carries a required completion date of December 31, 2028.

The detours matter as much as the closure. Through traffic gets sent around the work on I-435, north and south of the closure, and KCTV5's October report on where the traffic goes put local traffic on a roughly 20-minute detour by way of I-435 to reach downtown. A separate I-670 closure for the Roy Blunt Luminary Park construction starts in December 2026 and overlaps the I-70 closure for several months in 2027.

If you are comparing a home in Independence against one in Lee's Summit, you are comparing two commutes that look different in 2027 than they do today. MoDOT posts any change to that schedule on its Improve I-70 Kansas City project page.

Common questions

What is happening around Kansas City at Thanksgiving 2026?

Thanksgiving is Thursday, November 26. Jackson County sets off the Christmas in the Sky fireworks at Longview Lake Beach the evening before and opens the Christmas in the Park drive the same night, running to December 31. Ringling Bros. is at T-Mobile Center from Friday the 27th, and Kansas City Ballet opens The Nutcracker at the Kauffman Center on Saturday the 28th. Jackson County Parks and Recreation has the Longview Lake hours.

When do the Plaza lights come on in 2026?

The season runs from November 19 to January 3, 2027, according to Visit KC's annual events list. The lighting ceremony is a separate event and its 2026 date was listed as to be announced when I checked on October 22. Past ceremonies have been on Thanksgiving night.

How many Chiefs home games are there in November 2026?

Two, both at noon: the New York Jets on Sunday, November 8 and the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday, November 22. The rest of the month is on the road, including Thanksgiving night in Buffalo. The team's schedule release has the dates.

Is the National WWI Museum open on Veterans Day 2026?

Yes, and the ceremony at 10 a.m. on November 11 is free and open to the public. The museum's Veterans Day page has free programming from November 6 through 11, with the museum closed on Tuesday the 10th. The centennial light installation on the tower ends that same night.

Is the City Market farmers market open in November?

Yes, on Saturdays and Sundays. The City Market's farmers market page has November and December hours of 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and its events page has the Merry Market replacing those hours with 10 to 4 from November 28.

I am moving to the Kansas City area this winter. Where should I start?

You'll want to start with which side of State Line Road the home is on, and then which city inside that state. Those two answers change your income tax, your property tax bill and in some cases an earnings tax on top of both. Kansas City, Missouri charges a 1% earnings tax on people who live in the city and on people who work there. The Missouri page covers the statewide rules and the Kansas City area guide covers the Missouri-side cities one at a time.

The FHFA's 2026 conforming loan limit values put every county on this page at the standard conforming limit rather than a high-cost one. A conforming limit is the largest loan Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will buy in a county, and the difference between conforming and jumbo explains what changes when a loan goes over it. If you are buying your first home in Missouri, the Missouri first-time home buyer savings account explains a state tax deduction worth setting up before you start saving. Getting pre-approved in Missouri covers what gets reviewed before anybody writes a letter.