Bay Lights display returns to San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in grand lighting ceremony. Here’s how to watch.

By Jose Fabian

The Bay Lights are officially returning to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on Friday after being shut off in 2023 due to environmental wear.

A grand lighting ceremony is being held at the Embarcadero, where a countdown will happen ahead of the relighting.

How to watch “The Bay Lights” relighting

Beginning at 7 p.m., CBS News Bay Area will live stream the relighting ceremony.

You can watch in the video player above and on all streaming devices via the CBS News app.

Illuminate, the nonprofit hosting the event, said founder Ben Davis, and the artist behind The Bay Lights, Leo Villareal, will be in attendance and speak ahead of the grand relighting.

There will then be a countdown around 7:30 p.m. leading up to the relighting of the northern cable plane on the bridge’s western span.

Illuminate said the event will also double as a celebration for former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown’s 92nd birthday. The span of the bridge where The Bay Lights are installed is named after Brown.

The Bay Lights history

Illuminate said Davis originally began the project and brought in Villareal, a NYC-based artist, to design an artwork for the Bay Bridge, and while the relighting is for the northern cable plane, a second phase of the project is underway, which will bring expanded visibility to other parts of the Bay Area. 

The original Bay Lights project went up in 2013 and was turned off in 2020 due to environmental wear, a decision that was made by Villareal. 

The new light system is made up of 48,000 individual LED lights and is designed to withstand “the wind loads, the salt air, the vibration, and the need for long-term reliability,” according to Adam DeJong, Musco Lighting project manager.

The privately-funded project cost $11 million to replace the original installation.