New Year in Tbilisi is not one night. The party opens on 31 December with fireworks, pauses for Orthodox Christmas on 7 January, and only really lets go after Old New Year on 14 January. Georgia keeps the Julian calendar for its church feasts, so the religious dates land a couple of weeks behind the secular ones, and the city celebrates both.
That gap is the whole point. If you arrive on the 2nd expecting the season to be winding down, it hasn’t even reached Christmas. Plan for a fortnight of holidays, not a single countdown.
The three dates that actually matter
December 31 is the big secular blowout: the countdown, the sparkling wine, the fireworks. January 7 is Orthodox Christmas, a quiet religious day anchored by the Alilo procession. January 14 is Old New Year, the Julian-calendar 1 January, marked with a second, smaller round of fireworks the night before and one more family feast.
There’s a fourth date worth knowing. January 2 is Bedoba, the day of fate, when Georgians treat how you spend the day as a template for the year ahead. It’s a public holiday too, so the shuttered-bank problem below applies to it as well.
New Year’s Eve: there’s no single fireworks show
Don’t stand around waiting for one official display to start. Tbilisi doesn’t really do a single municipal firework launch. Instead, thousands of households buy their own rockets from markets and corner shops and set them off from balconies and courtyards at midnight, so the whole skyline goes off at once from every direction, per Wander-Lush’s Tbilisi Christmas guide.
That changes where you want to be. A ground-level square gives you one slice of the sky; height gives you the entire bowl of the city lighting up. The high vantage points people head for are Mtatsminda, the Narikala ridge, and Betlemi Rise in the Old Town.
There is a public gathering with a gala concert and vendors at First Republic Square, at the top of Rustaveli Avenue, if you’d rather have a crowd and a stage. Either way, getting home is easy: public transport runs late and free across New Year’s night, extended until around 3am. That’s the one night I’d skip a taxi entirely.
Our advice: watch from height, not from a square. The city-wide, uncoordinated barrage is genuinely better seen from above, and it’s the thing about a Tbilisi New Year you can’t get anywhere else.
The Alilo procession on 7 January
Orthodox Christmas is the calm one. The night before, on 6 January, there’s a midnight liturgy at Sameba (the Holy Trinity Cathedral) in Avlabari that runs into the small hours. Then, on the afternoon of the 7th, comes Alilo.
Alilo is a charity march named after an old Georgian Christmas carol. Children and clergy dress in white, red and gold, carry crosses, icons and Georgian flags, and walk in a long column while people hand over sweets, toys and donations that get passed on to orphanages, care homes and prisons. It sets off in the early afternoon, sources put it around 1 to 2pm, from the top of Rustaveli near First Republic Square, moves down through the centre and Freedom Square, and finishes back at Sameba, according to Georgia Today’s holiday guide.
Anyone can join or just watch from the pavement. If you want the fuller religious side of the season, it pairs well with a slow morning around the city’s churches, which we cover in our guide to Tbilisi’s Orthodox churches.
What’s open and what’s shut on the holidays
This is where most trips trip up. January 1, 2, 7 and 19 are official public holidays. Banks, government offices and the state museums close on those days, and some small family-run shops and cafes simply shut for the first week of January and reopen when they feel like it.
What keeps running is more than enough to eat and get around on. Metro and buses operate on a normal schedule, and the bulk of restaurants, bars and cafes stay open right through, including on the 1st and the 7th.
So the practical rule is simple. Don’t schedule a museum, a bank errand or paperwork for January 1, 2 or 7. Do save those days for the market, the food and a long walk. If a national museum is on your list, aim for the days between the 8th and the 18th, when the holidays thin out.
The Christmas market and where the tree is now
The main City Hall Christmas market sits at First Republic Square, at the top of Rustaveli. For the 2025/2026 season it opened on 12 December with the ceremonial lighting of the main New Year tree, and ran daily into mid-January, extended through the 14th. One thing to flag if you’ve been before: the tree moved here from its old spot in front of Parliament, so the guides that still send you down the avenue are out of date.
What’s actually there is wooden huts, mulled wine, sweets, a stage with music and puppet shows, and enough lights to justify the walk after dark. It’s compact, not a sprawling German-style market. An hour does it, two if you eat.
What’s on the holiday table
Two dishes define the season. Satsivi is cold turkey or chicken under a thick, pale walnut sauce loaded with garlic, coriander, fenugreek and marigold, made ahead and served at room temperature, which is exactly why it suits a table that stays laid for hours. Gozinaki is the sweet: walnut halves set in caramelised honey, cut into little diamonds, eaten at New Year and Christmas and almost never in between.
Then there’s the chichilaki, which throws a lot of visitors. It’s a pale, curly little tree made from a shaved hazelnut branch, the strips left attached and fanned out like a beard. Families keep it through the season and burn it around Epiphany to send off the past year’s troubles. You’ll see them stacked at markets from December.
And Santa? Georgia’s own gift-bringer is Tovlis Babua, Snow Grandfather, who comes down from the Svan mountains in a white felt coat and a Svan felt cap, carrying presents in a saddlebag rather than a sack.
Weather, and the myth that winter is cheap
January is the coldest month, but it’s not brutal. Daytime highs sit around 4 to 6°C and nights dip a degree or two below zero, with the odd mild spell pushing past 10°C; January also sees the year’s heaviest snow, though the totals are light and it rarely lies for long, per Climates to Travel. Daylight is short too, only about nine hours around the turn of the year, so the market and the lit streets carry more of the day than they would in summer.
Here’s the correction worth making: winter is not half-price. Nightly hotel rates soften only modestly across the cold months, on the order of the mid-$60s down to the mid-$50s. What actually halves is occupancy, not the rate, so the city feels emptier without the bill dropping to match. Pack for cold and short days, and read our full Tbilisi in winter guide before you book. For a month-by-month breakdown, the Tbilisi weather by month page has the numbers.
Frequently asked questions
Is Tbilisi a good place to spend New Year’s Eve?
Yes, if you want a loud, informal night rather than a ticketed spectacle. The midnight fireworks come from every rooftop at once, restaurants run late, and transport home is free until the small hours. It’s less polished than a Western capital’s show and more fun for it.
Why does Georgia celebrate Christmas on 7 January?
The Georgian Orthodox Church still fixes its feast days by the older Julian calendar, which currently runs 13 days behind the Gregorian one most of the world uses. So 25 December on the church calendar falls on 7 January by the everyday one, and the church New Year lands on the 14th.
Will restaurants be open on 1 January in Tbilisi?
Most will. Cafes, bars and restaurants largely stay open through the holidays, and public transport runs. The things that close are banks, government offices, state museums and a scattering of small family shops that take the first week off entirely.
Can tourists watch or join the Alilo procession?
Both. It’s a public march through the centre on 7 January and onlookers line the route; you’re also free to walk along. Dress warmly and modestly if you plan to follow it into Sameba Cathedral at the end.
One last thing to get right: book your December 31 dinner well ahead. The good tables sell out for New Year’s Eve faster than for any other night of the year, and a walk-in at 9pm on the 31st is the one plan that reliably falls apart.
Featured image: Photo: Kris Duda / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Leave a Reply