The Boston Pops Are Finally Staying for the July 4th Fireworks!
For 31 years, Keith Lockhart watched the bangs and booms from backstage like everyone else. America's 250th birthday seemed like a good time to stop.
Photo by Michael Buckner/Billboard via Getty Images; Photo via BG048/Bauer-Griffin/Getty Images
Here’s what you already know about the Fourth of July on the Esplanade: You must arrive too early. You sit on a blanket that’s too small. You eat something lukewarm out of a cooler and pretend to enjoy it. You sweat. You hear “The Stars and Stripes Forever” and feel, despite yourself, genuinely moved. And then the Pops pack up, the fireworks start, and you wonder why the orchestra isn’t playing anymore. Every year, the same thing.
This year, finally, Keith Lockhart agrees with you.
“It’s something I have always wanted to do,” says the conductor, now in his 31st year with the Pops, explaining that for the first time, the orchestra will play live during the fireworks—not before them, not adjacent to them, but actually choreographing the explosions in real time. “It’s always felt strange that the celebration finished with us sitting on the back of the Hatch Shell, watching the fireworks with everyone else.” Strange is one word for it. Anticlimactic is another. But not this time.
The rest of the upgrades: The special-guest lineup includes names with real sizzle: country-music star Lainey Wilson, hip-hop artist Chance the Rapper, and trombonist Trombone Shorty. There will be a Revolutionary-themed drone show during Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, as well as two world-premiere works celebrating America’s 250th.
Given all the fanfare, it’s not surprising that the crowd is expected to be 25 percent larger. CNN is broadcasting the Boston spectacular nationally and streaming worldwide, so if you’d rather watch from your couch in air conditioning, no one will judge you.
But if you go—and you should go, at least once, at least this year—you’ll get the Charles, the cannons, the sweat, the lukewarm pasta salad, and a birthday party 250 years in the making. The Pops will finally stick around for the whole thing. It’s about time.
Photo by Matthew J. Lee/the Boston Globe
This article was first published in the print edition of the June 2026 issue, with the headline,“Happy 250th.”
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