The events, camps, and places Madrid families are looking at right now.
Festival
Streets and plazas across the city light up for the holidays, including bulbs designed by Madrid first and second graders. Can your kids spot the ones by kids their age?
Guided Visit
An open-top bus loops past Puerta de Alcalá, Colón and Serrano under the lights, so kids see the whole display without walking it.
More than 100 red stalls of nativity figures, tinsel and gag gifts fill the main square, and the joke-shop wigs are where kids stop first.
Performance
More than 25 animated characters sing and dance across a department store facade, to a song Madrid parents still know by heart.
Madrid's Christmas circus is back, this year with the Raluy family's six-generation troupe: acrobats, balancing acts, jugglers and clowns in the Price's round ring.
Collection
The free lights, markets and nativity scenes, plus the rinks, shows and parades we checked for Christmas, through January 6.
Exhibition
Madrid's volunteer nativity makers fill a hall on Sol with tiny villages, shepherds and the Three Kings. It is free to walk around, if you can beat the line.
Sports
Last season it laid more than 4,000 square meters of ice inside Atlético's stadium, with workshops, Santa visits and a Playmobil corner for skaters who needed a break.
Things To Do
Play café for under-5s, with a glass-walled play zone.
A big outdoor rink of natural ice, about 40 craft stalls and churros with hot chocolate, all under the Edificio España.
Specialty coffee with a calm play zone for under-5s.
Three live shows, an ice rink and parades through a garden turned Christmas kingdom, where Santa and the Three Kings each get their own stage.
Where to take a baby or toddler, from play cafés and playgrounds to shows that welcome the under-fours.
An evening Christmas park with a lake ice rink, a giant Ferris wheel and nightly fireworks.
Looney Tunes characters dress for the holidays, a 22-meter tree lights up every day, and both Santa and the Three Kings come to meet the kids.
The rides stay open under holiday decorations, and kids can hand their letter to Santa until Christmas Day, then to the Three Kings.
Kids pin on a real bib and run laps of a proper athletics track, with a start wave for every age.
The night before New Year's Eve, the Sol clock runs a full rehearsal of the 12 chimes at midnight. Bring 12 gummy candies so kids can practice without grapes.
Matadero's old slaughterhouse yards turn into a Christmas village of free shows and workshops around an outdoor rink. Last year, fake snow fell on the plaza each evening.
Acrobats perform around dancing fountains while giant whales float over the crowd in a big top in Hortaleza. The ocean story brings pirates, mermaids and a storm or two.
The three Kings ride down the Castellana on royal floats while their pages throw candy to the curb, and the night ends with fireworks over Cibeles.
A giant indoor fair of workshops, sports, video games, magic and live shows, built so kids try things instead of just watching.
Skate under the glass roof of City Hall's Galería de Cristal, then walk through the city's giant nativity in the old post office hall.
Park
Rowing lake, puppet theater, playgrounds and 125 hectares of shade.
Attraction
Glide over Madrid's skyline and treetops to Casa de Campo.
Museum
Las Meninas plus a kids' audio trail through nine paintings.
Indoor ski slope, aquarium, bowling and ball pit in one mall.
Playgrounds, museums, shows and play centers pitched at kids between four and seven.
Ball pits, a role-play mini city and specialty coffee for parents.
About 30 kinds of pumpkin and gourd from the garden's own plot, including the bottle-shaped one kids call the canteen.
