Albuquerque's Luminaria Bus Tour Got a One-Year Reprieve, and Tickets Drop Black Friday Morning

A seat on ABQ RIDE's Christmas Eve Luminaria Tour costs $1.50. By the city's math, the same seat cost about $341 to provide last year. That gap is why the tour was canceled in September. It is also why the version running this December 24 is a reprieve rather than a rescue.

Tickets go on sale online at 8 a.m. on Black Friday, November 27. Before that morning, it helps to know what actually went wrong with the tour, because the problem was never demand at the ticket window.

Five days in September

The tour's 2026 season was settled in under a week:

1. Friday, September 18. ABQ RIDE announced it would no longer run the bus tour, starting this year. City leaders told KOB 4 the tour was too expensive to operate and that they wanted to give transit staff Christmas Eve off.
2. The same day. District 2 City Councilor Joaquín Baca told KRQE the decision was "a shock to all of us." He told KOB 4 the tour is "part of our cultural heritage."
3. Wednesday, September 23. Mayor Tim Keller directed the city to run the tour this Christmas Eve while developing a lower-cost, less demanding model.

KOAT reported the mayor's reasoning. "We're not going to lose an Albuquerque tradition while we figure out a better way to keep it going," Keller said, describing the current model as one that is no longer sustainable. The transit department plans research, community meetings and surveys on the route, walking options and additional areas.

So this year's tour runs on the old model while the city designs whatever replaces it.

What a $1.50 seat costs the city

ABQ RIDE told KRQE that the 2025 tour cost about $200,000. That covered transit operations, staffing, barricades, police traffic control and signage. Spread across about 586 riders, it came to roughly $341 a person. In 2025, 1,000 tickets were available.

Ticket sales did nothing to close that gap. ABQ RIDE is a zero-fare system, so the tour brings in no fare revenue to offset what it costs to run.

Staffing is the other half of the cost. The New Mexico News reported that the Christmas Eve event requires 27 extra buses and 10 Sun Vans, at a time when the transit department is short on drivers. Fuel was not part of the problem. ABQ RIDE Deputy Director Bobby Sisneros told KOB 4 the buses run on compressed natural gas.

The tickets that never boarded

The $1.50 tickets have always gone fast. KOB 4 reported that they usually sold out within hours or minutes. The trouble came on Christmas Eve itself. Over the past ten years, only 62% of ticket holders actually showed up.

The city's first release had that backwards, saying 62% of tickets went unused. KOB 4 later published a correction. The city meant that 62% were used, which leaves about 38% of reserved seats empty.

Cutting the fleet didn't solve the no-show problem either. Sisneros described the cycle to KOB 4:

"We would try to reduce the number of buses in anticipation of fewer folks arriving. But every time we made an adjustment, that next year fewer folks showed up."

The tour site gives ticket holders a simple way to avoid an empty seat. If your plans change, you can forward your ticket email to a friend or hand them the printed tickets. No name change is needed. If you buy four seats on Black Friday and end up needing two, the other two can still go to someone.

Black Friday at 8 a.m.

The 2026 tour keeps the same shape as last year:

• Price: $1.50 per ticket.
• Where to buy: Online only, through the official Luminaria Tour site. There are no phone sales and no sales at the Hold My Ticket box office.
• When: Sales open at 8 a.m. on Friday, November 27. The site says tickets typically sell out within a few hours.
• Departures: Four tours leave the Albuquerque Convention Center downtown on Thursday, December 24, at 5:30, 5:45, 6:15 and 6:30 p.m.
• The ride: About 45 minutes through Old Town and the Country Club area, ending back at the Convention Center.
• Parking: From I-25, head west on Martin Luther King Jr. Ave./Marquette Ave. past Broadway and through 3rd Street, then merge left into the Civic Plaza underground parking structure. All other access roads around it will be closed for the event. Free parking for people with disabilities is available in the lot at 3rd and Marquette.

Huning Castle lights up either way

The neighborhood sets out the luminarias. As KRQE reported, hundreds of homes in Huning Castle set out candles in paper bags to remember loved ones who are no longer here for the holidays.

Huning Castle Neighborhood Association President Rudy Garcia told KOB 4 that transit officials had been talking with the association since April. He also pointed back to 2020. "The bus tour was canceled during COVID year of 2020, so we didn't have a bus tour then, but yet we had a phenomenal Christmas Eve," he said. In the same coverage, KOB 4 noted that some neighbors are concerned about safety as more cars come through.

The ideas ABQ RIDE has floated for later years come straight out of that history. Sisneros told KOB 4 the future might be "a walking tour, maybe it is the buses come back." He said the department needs to "stop, listen to the community, get their input" and modernize the event. He also mentioned surveying past ticket buyers. So whoever books a seat on November 27 is likely to be asked what the next version should look like.

The rest of the week tickets go on sale

Black Friday starts a crowded stretch of the holiday calendar, and several events need planning around it:

River of Lights also uses date-and-time tickets, and they are nonrefundable. The operator warns that nights near and after December 25 sell out. The show is closed on December 24, 25 and 31 and January 1, so a Christmas Eve bus ride and a River of Lights night can't share a date. Regular adult admission this season is $21 for ages 13 and up, and $12 for ages 3 to 12. That is up from the $15 adult price KOAT reported for 2025. Value Nights cost $15 for adults. KRQE reports 50 new sculptures this year, some with Route 66 Centennial themes, and Blake's Lotaburger as the event's first-ever sponsor.

The Old Town Holiday Stroll and the Twinkle Light Parade don't need tickets. The bus tour is the one with a deadline, and its tickets go on sale at 8 a.m. on November 27.

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