{"id":785072,"date":"2026-05-09T21:03:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T21:03:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/785072\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T21:03:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T21:03:14","slug":"buckingham-fountain-debuts-for-the-2026-season-nbc-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/785072\/","title":{"rendered":"Buckingham Fountain debuts for the 2026 season \u2013 NBC Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The countdown to summer in Chicago ramped up on Saturday as a popular landmark was turned on for the warmer months. <\/p>\n<p>Buckingham Fountain returned for the season during the 12th annual Switch on Summer festival, a partnership between the Chicago Park District and ComEd. The annual event kicks off summer programming downtown like Night Out in the Parks and other cultural events in Grant Park. <\/p>\n<p>A northern Illinois resident who was selected through a sweepstakes flipped the switch, marking the return of one of the world&#8217;s largest fountains.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;While in operation, the Fountain produces a major water display for 20 minutes every hour,&#8221; the Park District explained on its website. &#8220;During the major display, a center jet shoots water to a height of 150 feet into the air.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Throughout the season, major shows take place daily at 9:00 a.m. and continue each hour. After dusk, a lights and music display occurs at the beginning of each hour.<\/p>\n<p>The last display each day is at 10:35 p.m., with the fountain shutting down at 10:55 p.m.<\/p>\n<p>Visitors and residents will have many opportunities to see the fountain in action until it closes for the season in late October.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The countdown to summer in Chicago ramped up on Saturday as a popular landmark was turned on for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":785073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,5462,5386,1818],"class_list":{"0":"post-785072","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-chicago-news","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-illinois"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116546647370553050","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=785072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}