MoCA L.I.ghts returns to downtown Patchogue from Thursday, Oct. 22 through Monday, Oct. 26. It runs from 6 to 11 p.m. each night, and it's free. The Patchogue Arts Council bills it as Long Island's only light projection festival. It began in 2020 as a safe way to see art during the pandemic. Two changes this year matter most for planning your evening. The festival is expanding into Lakeview Cemeteries, and a free trolley will connect every installation site. Together they turn a walk past lit-up facades into a route, and one piece of the program keeps going well after the five nights end.
Seventh year, and the first among the headstones
The new installation is called "What's Glowing On In The Cemetery?" It uses narrative projections at Lakeview Cemeteries to bring local history to life after dark. Organizers haven't said which people or stories will appear. The ground itself explains why the setting fits.
According to the Friends of Lakeview Cemeteries, the property holds five separate burying grounds: Lakeview, Rice, Union, Old Episcopal/Methodist, and Gerard. The Union burying ground dates to a church established in 1791. Rice Cemetery dates to 1871 and Lakeview Cemetery to 1878. The Friends are volunteers. They restore and preserve the grounds and repair headstones, and they're listed as a cultural partner for this year's festival.
The timing ties to this year's theme, "Antiquity to Innovation." The Arts Council links it to the 250th anniversary of American independence. The idea is to trace art from "pigment and chisel to printing press and camera to electricity, projection, and immersive light." Past years stayed on modern downtown surfaces. This year, projection technology meets grounds that have been part of Patchogue since the eighteenth century, which puts the "antiquity" half of the theme on real local ground.
Why a trolley shows up now
Adding the cemetery also spreads the festival out. Organizers are adding a free trolley that stops at every installation site all evening. The festival's official site says the service will run throughout the event evenings. You can still see the festival by car, on foot, or online, as in past years.
The Arts Council's 2026 artist calls name the first five viewing locations below. The cemetery comes from the festival's September announcement.
| Location | What's there | When |
|---|---|---|
| PAC•MoCA facade, 20 Terry St. | "Lights On MoCA L.I.," a rotating set of works chosen from an international open call | Oct. 22–26, 6–11 p.m. |
| Patchogue Theatre for the Performing Arts digital marquee | "Art on the Marquee," with videos, GIFs, animations, and digital stills | October through December 2026 |
| Roe Walkway Plaza | Night Visions pop-up projection screen | Oct. 22–26, 6–11 p.m. |
| The Better Man Distilling Co. | Night Visions pop-up projection screen | Oct. 22–26, 6–11 p.m. |
| Plaza Cinema & Media Arts Center | Night Visions pop-up projection screen | Oct. 22–26, 6–11 p.m. |
| Lakeview Cemeteries | "What's Glowing On In The Cemetery?" | Festival hours; no separate cemetery schedule announced |
The Arts Council's own facade is set aside for the artists it serves this year. It's a long, narrow vertical surface, so submitted works were expected to be tall compositions that might be cropped. The Pat-Med Library, St. Paul's Episcopal Church, and Patchogue United Methodist Church are named as cultural partners. They weren't confirmed as projection sites in the announcement.
One artist's pieces to look for
The full 2026 artist list hadn't been posted as of late September. The festival description counts more than 200 local, national, and international artists. One of them, artist Lucy Boyd-Wilson, has posted her selections on her own site.
- PAC•MoCA facade: two vertical animations, Drawing Flowers and Tread Softly
- Night Visions pop-up screens: Tread Softly and Tree
Tread Softly is listed for both the tall facade on Terry Street and the pop-up screens. Seeing it in both places lets you compare how one piece changes with the surface it's projected on, and the trolley makes that easier to do in one night.
What's confirmed, and what hasn't been announced
The five nights will include the returning opening-night outdoor opera and dance performance. There will also be new live performances, a bar crawl fundraiser, on-site educational programs, and virtual workshops for anyone who wants to try projection art. Many of the practical details were still missing as of Sept. 29:
- A 2026 installation map
- Trolley stops and a timetable
- The time, location, and performers for the opening-night opera and dance
- The date, participating bars, and ticket price for the 2026 bar crawl
- Separate hours for the cemetery installation
The official site still links English and Spanish maps from 2025 while 2026 details are pending. Those maps show last year's layout. They don't reflect the cemetery or the trolley. The same goes for the bar crawl. The 2025 "Sip n' Glow" crawl ran on the festival's closing Sunday at 5:30 p.m. That's a useful reference, but there's no confirmation it will follow the same format this year.
One smaller inconsistency: a photo caption in Patch's Sept. 23 coverage calls this the festival's fifth consecutive year. The article itself and the Arts Council both say it's the seventh. Seven matches a festival that started in 2020.
After Monday the 26th
The Patchogue Theatre marquee is the part of MoCA L.I.ghts that keeps running. The Arts Council says "Art on the Marquee" will run from October through December 2026. It appears at all the festival events and continues after them, with exact run times still to be announced. The Arts Council's main page says works will be shown at multiple downtown locations from October through December. The marquee is the only post-festival display with confirmed details so far.
So the art keeps showing up after festival week. It'll likely be on the marquee over Thanksgiving weekend, for example, when the Theatre has Blue Öyster Cult booked for Friday, Nov. 27 at 8 p.m.
The Greater Patchogue Chamber of Commerce's recent posts list two more events. The posts don't give a year, but the weekdays match this October's calendar. Confirm with the organizers before you go:
- Saturday, Oct. 10, noon to 4 p.m.: The Greater Patchogue Chamber of Commerce Fall Festival on Main Street, with live music, craft vendors, family games, and food trucks
- Friday, Oct. 23, 5 to 9 p.m., and Saturday, Oct. 24, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.: An indoor makers' pop-up at The Creative Patch, 33 E. Main St. The Friday hours overlap the festival's second night.
The Creative Patch is a family craft studio that had opened by late August. It offers ceramics, canvas art, and build-a-stuffy projects, and it planned to expand to five days a week starting in September.
The festival gets funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, Suffolk County Cultural Affairs, and Discover Long Island, along with local sponsors. The Arts Council said sponsorships were still available as of late September. Contact Executive Director Beth Giacummo at (631) 627-8686. Updates on the trolley route and cemetery hours will post on the Patchogue Arts Council's MoCA L.I.ghts page and the festival's official site.
If you're hosting visitors during festival week, or you'd like to know more about the blocks around Terry Street and Main Street where much of the art goes up, Monica Ghanbari is happy to talk it through. She grew up nearby and still follows what's happening downtown. Let's Connect.
