Lens Christmas Market

In front of the town hall on Place Jean Jaurès, Lens Christmas market sets out its twenty or so wooden chalets in the heart of a town with plenty of stories to tell. A former mining town in the Pas-de-Calais, Lens shows traces of its past everywhere: the rows of miners' houses (corons), the slag heaps of the UNESCO-listed mining basin, and the rebuilding that followed the destruction of 1918. The market's atmosphere reflects the town, down-to-earth and friendly, with the aroma of mulled wine and waffles accompanying your December shopping.

Lens Christmas market on Place Jean Jaurès

The chalets stand in front of the town hall, a building reconstructed in the 1920s regionalist style after the destruction of the First World War. Around twenty stallholders take turns here, many of them craftspeople and shopkeepers from the area: jewellery, cosmetics, wooden decorations, gift ideas and snacks. The format is modest, which makes the visit easy to fit into a late afternoon or a Saturday shopping trip. People come as much for the smell of mulled wine as to find a present that isn't from a big-box store.

At the centre of it all, an ice rink of around 360 m² and a carousel take over the square every afternoon. The ice rink is cheap (around €2.50 including skate hire in 2025), and the carousel costs a few euros. On some afternoons, mascots and bands wander between the aisles, keeping the children busy while the parents finish their list. It all adds up to a no-frills family outing, where the ice and the chalets are enough to fill an evening. As the square is central, the market is easy to combine with a browse around the town-centre shops or a coffee on a heated terrace between stalls.

For families, the appeal is that everything is concentrated on one square: little ones skate or ride the carousel while the grown-ups tour the stalls, without having to rush from one end of town to the other. The end-of-year programme often expands to include Father Christmas's arrival, children's shows and music between the chalets, with dates announced by the town during December. Weekends are livelier and busier than weekday evenings, a useful pointer depending on whether you're after the buzz of the crowds or a calmer weekday visit.

Northern specialities to try on the spot

The food of the Pas-de-Calais is a big part of the appeal of a market like this one. Between stalls, you'll come across carbonnade flamande slow-cooked in beer, potjevleesch served cold as a terrine, or welsh topped with melted cheddar. On the sweet side, tarte au sucre (sugar tart) is the safe regional bet. Chicon (the local name for chicory, or endive) often goes with the dishes, and northern beer and chicory coffee complete the picture. These are hearty recipes, which is just as well when the temperature drops and you're going round the chalets looking for the next present.

• Carbonnade flamande: beef slowly simmered in dark beer, with a hint of gingerbread to thicken the sauce.
• Potjevleesch: a terrine of white meats in jelly, a Flemish speciality eaten cold, often with chips.
• Welsh: bread, ham and cheddar melted with beer, a filling dish that warms you up in cold weather.
• Tarte au sucre and filled waffles, to take away with a cup of mulled wine; you can find the homemade recipe to keep the atmosphere going at home.

Chicory deserves a mention: long the poor man's coffee in the mining villages, it has become a regional emblem, found as a hot drink or in some pastries. A stall selling it is a chance to taste a piece of local history rather than yet another mass-produced chocolate. For sweet treats to take home, also look out for babeluttes, soft caramels made with candy sugar, and homemade gingerbread when a maker has some. To drink, northern beer comes in amber or Christmas versions brewed in the region, and local production shows right down to the choice of stalls. Nothing is set in stone: stallholders change from year to year, so there's always a chance of stumbling on a recipe you didn't know.

Practical information and access

The 2026 dates are not yet official and are to be confirmed with the town and the Lens Liévin Hénin Carvin tourist office. As a guide, the 2025 edition ran from 5 to 24 December, open from 2pm to 8pm on weekdays and from 12pm at weekends, with entertainment extended until 31 December. Entry to the market is free; only the ice rink and the carousel charge.

By train, Lens station is served by TER regional trains from Lille and Arras, and by more direct services to Paris; Place Jean Jaurès is about a ten-minute walk from the station. The station itself is worth a look: built in 1926 by the architect Urbain Cassan, its curving outline evokes a steam locomotive, a nod to the town's railway and mining past. By car, the A21 motorway serves the area and parking is in the town-centre car parks, best planned a little ahead on busy Saturdays. The square is flat and step-free, which makes access easier for people with reduced mobility and for pushchairs. A seasonal tip: wrap up warm, as the square is exposed to the wind and a December late afternoon in northern France cools down quickly once the sun goes down. The best time is early evening, when the fairy lights come on and the mulled wine is flowing; that's also when the market really comes into its own, between the glow of the chalets and the steam from the cups.

Mining heritage around Lens Christmas market

What makes a visit rewarding is everything around Lens Christmas market. The Louvre-Lens, built on the site of the former pit no. 9, offers its Galerie du Temps (Gallery of Time) free of charge: a journey through art history in a glass building designed by the Japanese practice SANAA. Redesigned at the end of 2024, the gallery displays around 250 masterpieces from the Louvre's collections and partner museums, spanning nearly 5,000 years of art over 3,000 m². The museum sits in a 20-hectare landscaped park designed by Catherine Mosbach, which has kept traces of the pit: the old cavaliers, the railway tracks that carried coal to the station, and the historic entrance to the site. In winter, it's the perfect stop between showers, about twenty minutes’ walk from the centre.

A few kilometres away, the twin slag heaps of Loos-en-Gohelle dominate the skyline. Linked to pit 11/19, worked from 1894 to 1986, they rise to nearly 186 metres, the highest in Europe, and on a clear day offer a 360° view over the basin. On the pithead site, the 1920s steel headframe and the 1960 concrete coal-washing tower still stand, silhouettes that recall the miners (the “gueules noires”) and their work. The site is one of the major landmark locations on the UNESCO World Heritage List, alongside the Arenberg pit in Wallers and 9-9bis in Oignies.

The town also lives to the rhythm of RC Lens and its Bollaert-Delelis stadium, where the Sang et Or (“Blood and Gold”) thrill a crowd famous for its passion. The corons, rows of workers' houses built for the miners, still criss-cross the landscape: after 1918, the flattened town had to clear more than a million tonnes of rubble before being reborn in a mix of neoclassical, regionalist and Art Deco facades. A match on a December evening, a museum visit in the afternoon, a turn around the market at the end of the day: Lens lends itself to a weekend where end-of-year festivities blend with the memory of the mining basin. Neighbouring Liévin has its own identity; Lens cultivates the working-class energy that defines it, between corons, slag heaps and the Sang et Or.

Around Lens: other markets to combine

The area is ideal for December outings. Arras Christmas market and its Baroque Grand-Place are a quarter of an hour away by train, while Lille Christmas market and its big wheel on the Grand-Place fill a whole day. In the mining basin, Douai Christmas market, among belfries and cobbled squares, rounds off a weekend in the Nord and Pas-de-Calais.