The London Eye hosts the countdown fireworks display visible during London’s televised New Year’s Eve celebration.
The display is staged around the River Thames, with fireworks launched from the London Eye, barges, and nearby positions. Big Ben supplies the midnight chimes heard in the broadcast, but the London Eye is the landmark most directly associated with the fireworks themselves.
London’s organized New Year’s Eve fireworks display began in its modern form in 1999, when fireworks were used to welcome the year 2000. The event later became an annual ticketed celebration along the Thames, with millions more watching on television or online.
The London Eye is a giant cantilevered observation wheel on the South Bank. It opened to the public in 2000, so it was not the source of the original millennium fireworks, even though it became central to later celebrations.