The City of Light Relights Itself Once a Year: Eindhoven's GLOW and a Five-Kilometre Circuit Through the Dark

November in Eindhoven, and by five in the afternoon it is already dark. For eight nights in this city in the south of the Netherlands, a current of people forms the moment the sun goes down. A circuit is drawn through the city centre, running some five kilometres, and hundreds of thousands walk it with their coat collars turned up. The wall of a church, the trees in a square, the buildings along a canal — surfaces one would ordinarily pass without a glance — turn into works of light for those nights alone. There is no ticket. Walking the winter city is itself the act of going round the exhibition. This festival of light art, named GLOW, is the occasion on which a "city of light" that prospered on the electric bulb through the twentieth century relights itself, once a year.

What this essay sets out to read is the fact that the festival reweaves the industrial memory of the "city of light" into a winter ritual shared by the municipality, by industry and by citizens. Within the category this journal calls KŌ (候) — the lineage that makes climate, season and time-limitedness the condition of a work's coming into being — GLOW is a strikingly physical festival of light, one that takes the winter darkness of 51 degrees north as its ground and walks its audience through the streets along that darkness.

2006: The Way Home from Lyon

GLOW was born in 2006, out of a single decision by the City of Eindhoven. Through the twentieth century this was the home of Philips, and on the strength of producing bulbs and lighting technology it called itself the city of light — Lichtstad, City of Light. But at the turn of the century Philips moved its manufacturing away, and the city was left facing the question of how to carry that industrial identity forward. People from the municipality went to see the Fête des Lumières in Lyon and came back convinced that a festival of light of exactly that kind was what Eindhoven needed — this is the story told as GLOW's point of departure.

The first edition opened in November 2006 with fifteen works. Among the founding partners were the lighting company Signify (formerly Philips Lighting) and the city. It was a line-up in which the lighting engineers who had carried the city's industry joined hands with the administration that looks after the urban landscape, in order to place light in the streets not as a product but as a work. Operations are handled by the GLOW Foundation (Stichting GLOW), and the festival has run every November since without a break. 2023 was the eighteenth edition and 2025 the twentieth anniversary — counting from 2006, exactly twenty years of consecutive editions.

What is worth registering here is that GLOW's origin is inseparable from the turn of an industrial city. A city that became the city of light by making bulbs, having stopped making them, tried once more to be the city of light — this time by turning light itself into an object of viewing. The festival is a product of the season, and at the same time a product of this city's industrial history.

The Five-Kilometre Circuit

The skeleton of GLOW is a circuit of roughly five kilometres cutting through the city centre. The route is rewritten every year, directing light towards different blocks and districts from one edition to the next. Rather than moving through the rooms of a museum in sequence, the audience actually walks the winter streets and meets works that appear here and there along churches, squares and canals. Works placed in outdoor public space, with no admission charged: that design puts GLOW somewhere other than the museum's box office and other than the immersive experience of a commercial venue.

The scale has changed from year to year, and it has grown. The first edition drew some 45,000 people. By 2018 the figure had passed 750,000, making GLOW one of the largest audiences in the world for a festival of light walked outdoors. The number of works has risen too, from 15 in 2006 to about 33 within Eindhoven alone by 2024. A theme is raised each year as well: "URBAN SKIN" in 2022, "The Beat" in 2023, "The Stream" in 2024 — water and flow, the skin and the pulse of the city, subjects that have loosely bound each year's body of work together.

The technology of the works, too, has been updated to hold at the scale of a city. For "The Stream" in 2024, the artist Cindy Lo's Syntropia was placed on Wilhelminaplein, filling the square with a current of light by means of high-brightness laser projection. Not treating the stone wall of a church or the trees of a square as a flat screen, but taking their unevenness and their volume into the movement of the image — the handling this journal saw at the Fête des Lumières, where the shape of the architecture that supports the projection is used to the full rather than erased, appears here too at point after point along the circuit.

Twenty Years On: The City of Light Takes Itself as Its Subject

In 2025 GLOW marked its twentieth anniversary and raised, squarely, the theme "The Light." It was an edition that looked back over the twenty years travelled while placing light itself at the centre of the subject matter. That year the works spread beyond Eindhoven to five surrounding municipalities — Best, Oirschot, Veldhoven, Lieshout and Helmond — reaching some 87 in total. Mayor Dijsselbloem declared the opening on Stadhuisplein, and for eight nights the city became a circuit of light.

The works of that year show GLOW's character well. FACES – connecting people, placed at the Paterskerk, turned people's faces into light in collaboration with local healthcare institutions and others. Dream Town was made by the artist Hugo Vrijdag together with local primary school pupils. The Chandelier of Connection, a ring-shaped chandelier assembled from discarded PET bottles, made a bid for recognition by an international record body as the largest chandelier in the world. Most emblematic of all is Lempke, lit on the Lichttoren, the old Philips light tower. A tower that once produced bulbs surfacing at night as the support for a work of light — the industrial history of the city itself was built into the exhibition as one point on the circuit.

The GLOW Foundation has put into words, again and again, who this festival is for.

Light art should be for everyone, regardless of age, origin or background.

— GLOW Eindhoven — About GLOWsource

Light art belongs to everyone, whatever their age, origin or background — and the design of the festival, charging no admission and letting anyone meet a work simply by walking the streets, can be read as the implementation of that sentence. Ronald Ramakers, the artistic director who led every November for twenty years, has said that with the twentieth edition it is time to "pass the baton" to the next generation. From industry to festival, and from one generation to the next, GLOW means to be an occasion that hands light on.

Light Kindled Along the Winter Dark

What GLOW demonstrates is a form in which a city's brand — "the city of light" — can be translated into a citizens' winter ritual while keeping its industrial memory intact. Unlike the curation of a museum, unlike the immersive show business of commerce, unlike the time-limited release of an advertising slot, here the administration, a lighting company and the citizens together make an exhibition hold: one walked through the streets themselves, at the darkest time of the year.

In ink-wash painting, tenkei named the concept by which a small figure or boat brushed into a vast expanse of mountain and river gives the whole landscape meaning and scale. In Eindhoven in November, what serves as the ground is the darkness of the long winter night and the five kilometres of street itself. The sun sets early, the air cools, the city sinks into dark — only because that enormous ma, that interval, is there can the projection on a church wall, the installation in a square, and the single point of light kindled on the old light tower rise up as figure. Between one work and the next lies a dark distance that has to be crossed on foot. Walking that ma is what carries the audience to the next tenkei. Without the darkness, and without the time spent walking, light could not become a point in a landscape.

Through Vivid Sydney, which opens in the winter of the southern hemisphere, Signal Festival, which occupies the city in the central European autumn, the Amsterdam Light Festival, which takes the surface of the canals as its stage, and the Fête des Lumières, GLOW's direct source of inspiration, this journal has looked at events of light assembled on the premise of a season. Among them, what makes GLOW stand out is that it places the city's industrial history — the memory of a "city of light" that went on making bulbs — at the root of the festival. The light that factories once kindled is now kindled by artists and citizens. When the festival ends the projections vanish and the streets go back to being an everyday commute. Even so, when winter comes round again and November draws near, the city of light will relight itself once more, along five kilometres of dark.

Sources

1. fig.001GLOW 2025 aftermovie — The Light, 20th edition (official)(2025-11)
2. fig.002GLOW Eindhoven — Official Site (Stichting GLOW)
3. fig.003GLOW Eindhoven 2017 — official aftermovie (official channel)(2017-12)
4. [4]GLOW Eindhoven — About GLOW (official, history and mission)
5. [5]GLOW 2025 celebrates 20 years of light art (official, 20th anniversary)(2025)
6. [6]GLOW Festival Eindhoven — Wikipedia (origins, history, route, attendance)

Operations Record

OPERATOR

GLOW Foundation (Stichting GLOW, Eindhoven)

LOCATION

Eindhoven

MODEL

Festival programming — Launched in 2006 with the lighting company Signify (formerly Philips Lighting) and the Municipality of Eindhoven as founding partners; the foundation programmes the festival, commissioning and inviting national and international light artists

ARTIST PAY

Works are commissioned or invited; emerging artists and students are supported through GLOW Next / Talent tracks, with a Talent Award presented

CADENCE

Eight November nights each year, outdoors after dark; admission is free and visitors walk the city route. The 2026 edition runs 7–14 November under the theme "Connect"

SPEC

A curated walking route of roughly 5 km through the city centre; works grew from 15 in 2006 to about 33 in Eindhoven proper in 2024, reaching some 87 across Eindhoven and five surrounding municipalities for the 20th edition in 2025

SINCE

2006

STATUS

Active

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