Residents and officials of Temecula will greet 2025 on Tuesday night with a salute to fruit, lowering a batch of grapes over the town square to mark the final moments of the current year — on New York time — and welcome the New Year.
The annual “grape drop” celebration will begin at 6 p.m. in Town Square Park, which will undergo a temporary conversion to a Times Square-themed venue for celebrations on the last night of 2024.
Unlike in previous years, this one will feature only one grape drop, coinciding with the traditional extravaganza in New York City.
A large cluster of illuminated grapes, suspended approximately 80 feet above the city’s Town Square water fountain, will be dropped to mark the seconds before midnight on eastern time – meaning at 9 p.m. Pacific.
The countdown celebration will be open to the public outside Temecula City Hall and will feature live music by Bad Chemistry and Groove Squad, food vendors and children’s activities, including a “giant slide.”
A local “drone show” is planned just ahead of the Times Square celebration.
City officials are expected to stop by, and public safety personnel will be on hand. The party is slated to wrap at 10 p.m. Tuesday.
All of the grape drop celebrations, which began over a decade ago, have been in person except for the 2020-21 event, which was entirely virtual, broadcast via the city’s social media channels, because of the COVID lockdowns.
Temecula Valley is home to dozens of vintners, and grapes are the staple product.