Urban improvement in Russia

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2025:10 Russian cities by spending on New Year's decorations

By December 21, 2025, the top 10 Russian cities were determined in terms of budget expenditures for the New Year's decoration of streets. For the third year in a row, St. Petersburg became the leader, spending three times more on festive decor than Moscow - 1.23 billion rubles.

The rating was carried out by RTVI in conjunction with the Tenderscope service. Researchers studied information on the Public Procurement portal about contracts concluded by city administrations. According to Tenderscope's estimates, the total expenses of Russian cities for New Year's decorations exceeded 3 billion rubles.

The amount allocated from the budget of St. Petersburg for festive decoration amounted to a third of all-Russian costs. The most expensive contract cost almost 40 million rubles. So much money was needed to decorate the Admiralteysky district with a light tunnel. Another 39.92 million rubles were allocated for the installation of light arches in the same area in the form of comets. The rest of the funds went to the purchase of artificial spruce, including "multimedia," as well as to festive lighting of bridges, facades of buildings and streets.

Moscow took second place, spending 414 million rubles. The most costly was the registration of artificial fir trees of the Kommunarka district - almost 30 million rubles. Registration of the Central Administrative District with light structures with stars and watches cost 28.225 million rubles.

The third place in terms of costs was taken by Syktyvkar with an amount of 186.9 million rubles. A significant part of the funds (167 million rubles) was allocated for the rental of festive art objects, such as "Coat of Arms-Bird," "Komi Lantern" and light trees.

The fourth was Blagoveshchensk, which spent 126.9 million rubles on light arches, photo zones and figures of fairy-tale characters. Closes the top five Salekhard with expenses of 109.3 million rubles for ice towns and architectural lighting.

The top ten also included Kaliningrad (80.2 million rubles), Krasnoyarsk (75 million rubles), Chita (71.8 million rubles), Chelyabinsk (63.8 million rubles) and Barnaul (62 million rubles).

Compared to 2024, many cities have cut spending. For example, Nizhny Novgorod planned 50 million rubles instead of 68.8 million, and Krasnodar - 4.2 million rubles against 49.5 million a year earlier. At the same time, Ufa and Voronezh increased their budgets: the capital of Bashkortostan allocated 49.9 million rubles, and Voronezh - 57 million rubles.^[1]

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