Bay Lights Return to Bay Bridge After Three-Year Hiatus

Crowds gathered along the Embarcadero Friday evening as the western span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge flickered back to life, ending a three-year darkness that had stripped one of the city's most recognizable nighttime landmarks from the skyline. The Bay Lights, the 1.8-mile LED installation running along the bridge's northern cable plane, returned March 20 with a Grand Lighting ceremony marking the completion of a full rebuild funded entirely through $11 million in private donations.

The original installation, created by light artist Leo Villareal and produced by arts nonprofit Illuminate, debuted in 2013 and ran for nearly a decade before shutting down in March 2023. Years of exposure to wind, salt air, moisture and vibration had caused widespread system failures that organizers determined couldn't be fixed through incremental repairs. Instead, Illuminate, founded by Ben Davis, commissioned a complete replacement: a custom-engineered LED system built specifically to withstand the Bay's marine environment.

"You know what people are going to see when the Bay Lights return is a radical evolution of this artwork that has been in place for more than a decade," Davis said ahead of the relighting.

Villareal, who retained and preserved the original sequences, has spent the intervening years expanding the installation's underlying code. "This is the Bay Lights everyone knows and loves with the original sequences, but I've added a tremendous amount of new material that I've been working on, because my code has evolved over the last 10 years," Villareal said. "So I think the piece will have much more richness and depth."

Friday's ceremony activated the primary north-facing installation, the side most visible from San Francisco. Sources differ on the exact LED count: KTVU and Illuminate materials reference approximately 25,000 LEDs, while KCRA reported the rebuilt system features 50,000 upgraded LEDs. The other side of the bridge still requires final testing before it can be activated. A planned expansion previously called "Bay Lights 360," now officially designated TBL360, will launch separately after safety testing and agency review.

The $11 million rebuild drew support from more than 1,300 individual contributors. Donor JP Conte, who also backed the original 2012 installation, returned as a key funder. "Supporting The Bay Lights has always been about investing in the soul of San Francisco," Conte said. "This is a gift to the public — a reminder that wonder still belongs in the center of civic life."

The relighting date carried an added layer of significance: March 20 coincided with the 92nd birthday of Willie L. Brown, the former San Francisco mayor for whom the bridge's western span is formally named and a longtime supporter of the project.

The installation, partnered with Musco Lighting, a global firm whose portfolio includes the Statue of Liberty and Mount Rushmore, will now illuminate the bridge nightly from dusk to dawn. Illuminate describes The Bay Lights as one of the most photographed and shared public artworks in the world — a distinction the rebuilt, re-engineered version now inherits.