Rockefeller Center’s 2026 Christmas Tree Arrives in New York After 200-Mile Journey

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NEW YORK, NEW YORK - DECEMBER 04: Crowds gather for a look at the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, December 04, 2025, in New York City. The tree, which is one of the top annual attractions in Manhattan, was lit during a tree lighting ceremony Wednesday night. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

There’s no surer sign than Christmas is around the corner than the annual arrival of the mammoth tree that will spend the season outside Rockefeller Center in New York City.

This year’s tree has been selected, and the 2026 tree has been chopped down and completed its journey to Midtown Manhattan.

A 200-Mile Journey

This year’s tree was cut down on Thursday, November 5, and then shipped by truck to the Big Apple.

As The Associated Press reported, the 2026 Rockefeller Center tree is a 76-foot-high Norway spruce grown in West Edmensen, New York. Measuring about 50 meters in diameter, the tree is approximately 75 years old.

After being cut down, the tree was hoisted via crane on a flatbed truck to begin the 200-mile journey to its ultimate home overlooking the Rockefeller Plaza skating.

The tree arrived on the morning of Saturday, November 7. The next step will be decorating, with the tree to be draped with more than 50,000 multicolored LED lights. Sitting atop the tree will be 900-pound Swarovski crystal star.

The official tree-lighting ceremony will take place, as it does every year, during a televised ceremony airing on NBC; this year’s tree-lighting will take place on December 2.

The Tree’s Owner Thought It Was a ‘Joke’

Unbeknownst to Rebecca Decker, a garden team in search of this year’s tree had been scouting out her property, and had their eye on the massive spruce tree growing on her land in upstate New York.

When she received a knock on her door from Rockefeller Center head gardener Erik Pauze, she initially thought it was a prank.

“I thought that he was absolutely joking,” Decker said when appearing on NBC’s “Today” on Friday, November 6.

“I was like, ‘I live in the middle of nowhere.’ I definitely thought it was fake at first,” she admitted.

When Pauze told her he’d had his eye on her tree since 2020, she was flabbergasted.

Decker agreed to donate the tree, but admitted its loss from her property will be bittersweet for her and her family.

“I’m actually a little sad to see it leave now,” Decker confessed.

“Now I don’t really know how the yard’s going to look without it. It’s definitely going to be a conversation for a little while,” she added.

A Big Apple Tradition for Nearly a Century

As The Associated Press notes, the tradition of the annual tree-lighting ceremony in Rockefeller Center dates back to 1931, before construction of the tower was even complete.

During Christmas 1931, the construction crew working on the building erected a small Christmas tree, with a much larger version utilized when the first formal tree-lighting ceremony took place in 1933.

The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree will remain on display through to January 9. It will then be removed, and milled into lumber donated to the nonprofit housing charity Habitat for Humanity.