For the first time since the descent of the Times Square ball has become a tradition, New York is preparing to host two ball drop in the same twelve-month cycle. The first will take place as a calendar on the night between 31 December 2025 and 1 January 2026; the second, exceptional, was scheduled for the summer of 2026 and will be linked to the celebrations of Semiquincentennial, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence.
The preparations of the second descent will begin soon: immediately after the usual New Year’s countdown, around 00:04 on 1 January, the ball – recently renamed “Constellation Ball” – will be raised again and rekindled with monochromatic graphics inspired by the American flag. The sequence will be accompanied by a short pyrotechnic show and the launch of about 900 kilograms of patriotic confetti, on the notes of “America the Beautiful”. The installation will therefore remain visible, a kind of visual anticipation of the celebrations planned for the summer.
The second ball drop, then, is scheduled for Friday 3 July 2026, on the eve of Independence Day. It will be the first time since 1907 – the year when the ball was first used in Times Square – that the mechanism is reactivated for a different anniversary from the New Year. The event is part of the program coordinated by America250, the bipartisan organization responsible for planning initiatives for the anniversary. President Rosie Rios explained that the intention is to reproduce a structure similar to that of the classic New Year’s Eve in Times Square, accompanying it with live performances and a broadcast on a national scale. The idea is to use and integrate a well-known symbol of America globally to tell this historical event.
The descent of the Times Square sphere is followed each year by tens of millions of people on television and online and by about one million spectators physically present in the area, according to the estimates of the Times Square Alliance. Over the years, the sphere has become a support for special messages and celebrations – such as the tributes of September 11 or the celebrations for the change of millennium – but it had never been reused as a central event outside the New Year.
Article For the first time New York will have two Times Square ball drop in the same year comes from IlNewyorkese.
