From the Advent Procession at the end of November, until Christmas Day, 25,742 people attended a service of one kind or another.
The carol services were again the most popular, drawing more than 5,590 people. Midnight Mass was attended by more than 1,000 people. External carol services, for organisations including the emergency services, Winchester Academies Trust and local schools, were enjoyed by thousands more people.
Canon Roly Riem Interim Dean of Winchester said: “Christmas will always be first-and-foremost about worship, about giving thanks to God for the gift of his Son Jesus, who came to bring the greenness of fresh growth to a barren earth. We celebrate that so many over the festivities joined in Cathedral services and those in churches throughout the Diocese of Winchester.”
Winchester Cathedral welcomed almost 120,000 visitors to its annual Christmas Market in 2025, an increase of almost 4% on 2024. There were 145 traders at the Christmas Market last year of whom around 20% were new to the Market that year.
The majority of visitors were local (90% visiting from within 10 miles of Winchester), with 4% of visitors travelling more than 25 miles from as far afield as South Wales and Birmingham.
One on day in December, 11 coaches of tourists visited the market and a cruise ship on a trip from Germany sent visitors to the market from Southampton.
No waste from the market went to landfill and half of all the waste was compost and recycling.
The 2026 sponsors of the Christmas Market were Southwestern Railway, Stagecoach buses, Winchester Royal Hotel. A fourth, Paris Smith Solicitors, supported the installation of an additional solar panel to light the tree this year, and bought water bousers for redistribution of waste water at the market. These are now being used year-round by the cathedral gardening team.
It costs £14,000 a day to keep Winchester Cathedral open. The profits from its Christmas Market, and its other commercial ventures including the shop and refectory, are returned to the Cathedral budget to cover running and other costs.
The gardening team has been really busy, reseeding the lawns in the inner Close where the chalets stood from mid-November until January when they were gradually cleared. With just a few weeks of slightly longer days (not to mention all the rain during January and February) green shoots have soon appeared, reminding us that longer days are coming as we head into spring.
You can watch a video of our reseeding process here.