West Covina's 2026 holiday season starts with a steakhouse opening at Eastland Center on Nov. 2 and ends with a children's parade on S. Glendora Avenue on Dec. 12. In between, it stops at Plaza West Covina and twice at City Hall. Over those six weeks it moves through four places run by four kinds of hosts: a national restaurant chain, a mall's marketing team, the city, and a volunteer service club.
How much you can plan ahead depends on who is hosting. The businesses posted their hours, prices and giveaway rules weeks early. The city has posted dates, times and parking lots. The last event on the calendar, the parade, is still signing up the entries that will make it a parade. If you're planning your family's November and December around these events, that gap tells you which plans to lock in now and which to keep loose.
The calendar, start to finish
- Mon., Nov. 2: Fogo de Chão's scheduled opening at Eastland Center
- Fri., Nov. 13, 4 to 8 p.m.: Holiday Magic tree lighting at Plaza West Covina
- Mon., Nov. 16 through Sat., Dec. 12: Letters to Santa at City Hall
- Fri., Dec. 4, 6 to 9 p.m.: Let It Snow in the City Hall parking lot
- Sat., Dec. 12, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.: Children's Christmas Parade & Santa's Village on S. Glendora Avenue
Letters to Santa closes the same day as the parade. Kids who are writing to Santa have until parade morning to get their letters in.
Eastland Center starts things off with a table for dinner
The first new thing on the season's calendar is a restaurant. Fogo de Chão's West Covina page lists the address as 2625 E. Eastland Center Drive and gives Nov. 2 as the opening date. In May, What Now Los Angeles reported that the Brazilian steakhouse chain was building out the former TGI Fridays at the mall. Before this, the chain's Southern California list already included Pasadena, Brea and Rancho Cucamonga. With this opening, West Covina joins that list.
The full churrasco dinner is the main draw, with gauchos carving picanha and lamb at the table and a Market Table on the side. The LA Globe's opening write-up points to a lower-commitment way in. Bar Fogo serves Brazilian-inspired small plates, and its happy hour runs all day Monday through Thursday with $6 beers, $8 South American wines and $10 cocktails. On a weeknight in December, that's the difference between a planned celebration and a stop after shopping.
The posted hours are lunch Monday through Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., and weekend brunch Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Dinner runs 3 to 9:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 3 to 10 p.m. Friday, 2 to 10 p.m. Saturday, and 2 to 9 p.m. Sunday.
There's also a local tie-in. The LA Globe, citing What Now, reported that Fogo will give 10% of its first week's sales to Shepherd's Pantry, a local group that provides food and other help to people who need it. If the doors opened on schedule, that first week runs through the weekend of Nov. 7 and 8.
Fogo is a business with a reservation system, so every detail was online before the doors opened. That sets the pattern for the rest of the season: the more commercial the host, the more you can know ahead of time.
Plaza West Covina posts the rules, down to the wand count
Eleven days later, the season moves to Plaza West Covina, and the mall publishes its plans in the same detail. Holiday Magic, the Plaza's tree lighting, runs Friday, Nov. 13, from 4 to 8 p.m. at 112 Plaza Drive. The Eventbrite listing puts it in the Food Court and Center Court, near Pandora. The lineup includes live holiday performances, a holiday market by Simply Crafted Markets, photos with Santa, and the tree lighting itself. RSVP is free.
The fine print matters if you have kids. The first 500 Plaza Insiders who check in at the Plaza West Covina booth get a holiday magic wand to help light the tree, while supplies last. Wands go to children included in the RSVP. So put your children's names on the RSVP when you sign up, and get to the booth early. Five hundred wands at a four-hour event with Santa photos is not a number that lasts until 7:30.
The listing also links a Simply Crafted Markets vendor application for local makers who want a table, and gives a sponsorship contact at the mall. A mall wants foot traffic in mid-November, and a detailed, early listing is how it gets it.
City Hall has the date and the lot. The rest is last year's version.
Next the season goes civic, and the detail thins out. The City of West Covina's calendar lists Letters to Santa at City Hall, 1444 W. Garvey Ave. South, from Nov. 16 through Dec. 12. It's a four-week window, the longest of anything on the season's calendar, and the only event you can do on your own schedule.
Let It Snow, the city's evening event, is on the city calendar for December 4, 2026, from 6 to 9 p.m. in the West Covina City Hall parking lot. The page header calls Dec. 4 a Friday, and the description line underneath calls it a Saturday. Dec. 4, 2026 falls on a Friday, so plan for a school-night evening. The fire department's permit application for the event lists the same address, date and hours, so the logistics are set.
What the 2026 listing doesn't spell out is the program. The best guide is last year. The city's release for the 2025 Let It Snow, held Dec. 5, 2025, described a free event with snow, vendors, a tree-lighting ceremony, Santa photos, live entertainment and holiday performances. That is last year's lineup, not this year's promise. Last year's release went out on Dec. 4, 2025, the day before the event, so this year's details may also arrive late.
Both events have a tree lighting, Santa and a market or vendors. The Plaza posted wand counts and the spot by Pandora weeks in advance. The city posted a parking lot and a time window. So RSVP for the mall now, and keep an eye on the city's site for Let It Snow as December gets closer.
The parade on S. Glendora Avenue depends on whoever signs up
The season ends on its oldest street. The Children's Christmas Parade & Santa's Village is on the city calendar for Saturday, December 12, 2026, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in Historic Downtown West Covina along S. Glendora Ave.
The city listing doesn't have an RSVP button. Instead it links to the West Covina Kiwanis parade page for anyone who wants to take part as a parade entry or as a vendor. That one link explains why this event has the fewest posted details. In early November, nobody knows yet exactly what will roll down Glendora Avenue on Dec. 12, because the lineup is still being built from community sign-ups. The marching bands, floats and vendor booths are whatever local groups commit between now and then.
For residents, that means you can still shape this event. A school club, a youth sports team, a congregation or a neighborhood business that wants to be in the parade has a sign-up page to start from. A family that just wants to watch can count on the time window, the street and the five-hour span that covers both the parade and Santa's Village.
What's still open as of early November
- Let It Snow's 2026 program. Date, time and lot are posted. Activities, vendors and cost haven't been published for 2026.
- Plaza West Covina's Santa season. Santa photos are part of the Nov. 13 event. A separate schedule for the rest of the season hasn't been posted.
- The parade lineup. Entries and vendors are still signing up through the Kiwanis page.
Everything else on the calendar above is firm enough to plan around now, starting with the RSVP for Nov. 13 if wands are part of your plan.
If you're thinking about listing in the new year and want to talk through timing around the holiday stretch, Alex Lozano is glad to meet up for a coffee in West Covina or a walk along Glendora Avenue on parade day. Let's Connect.
