Chicago increases capacity at Christkindlmarket, but backlash continues

Days after the city of Chicago slashed capacity at its iconic Christkindlmarket by 75%, officials are increasing that number, but vendors are still irate at the decisionmaking process.

According to a Nov. 25 report in the Chicago Tribune, the city placed new capacity limits at 1,000 people, compared to the 5,000 visitors the attraction has drawn on normal days in recent years.

On Monday, the city upped that capacity limit to 2,500 visitors, which is still not acceptable to vendors who are seeing big hits to their businesses because of the cuts.

“It’s effect is big time,” Elias Hosh, a vendor who’s been at the market for more than 20 years, said. “It’s affecting business by over 65 percent.”

Hosh and other vendors say the capacity limits had led to the formations of long lines, which has dissuaded potential customers from attending.

“The line outside is much longer than usual so it makes our sales really a big drop,” he said.

The more restrictive limits were put in place just 12 hours before Christkindlmarket opened for the season, according to vendors and officials.

Chicago Ald. Brian Hopkins is among those who has been critical of the decision-making process.

“We don’t know whose decision this was, we don’t know the justification for it, we don’t know reasons behind it and we don’t know why it was announced at the last minute,” he said.

Hopkins is the chair of the Chicago City Council’s public safety committee, and said the new restrictions came out of nowhere after nearly 30 years of the attraction being open in Daley Plaza.

“We don’t have any complaints about over capacity and all of the sudden they come up with this artificially low number that actually threatens the viability of the market itself,” he said.

Operators told NBC Chicago the Office of Emergency Management and Communications first informed them of the capacity limit just before opening day, citing municipal codes and safety concerns.

Even now that the city has raised that limit to 2,500 visitors, organizers say that the increased attendance won’t be enough to bolster sales, or to persuade some vendors to sign on again for the 2026 season.

 “We’re appreciative but unfortunately for our vendors it’s really not going to move the needle,” Mark Tomkins, CEO of the German American Chamber of Commerce, said. “It may keep a few of them from having a disastrous year, but it’s not enough to say hey they’re going to be excited about coming back next year.”

Tomkins said he’s continuing to work with the mayor’s office on a solution.

A spokesperson for Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office said the city is working with organizers to increase capacity in a “safe manner,” and they will “continue to work with event organizers to evaluate possible alternative locations” for the annual event.

In the short-term, however, vendors say they’ve already had to call workers overseas to tell them they have too much inventory on hand.

“He told the workers to stop working because we don’t have enough money to pay all those workers that work with us back home.,” Hosh said. “This has never, never happened to us.”