San Antonio, TX Sign Regulations: Holiday Displays (2026)

San Antonio's Unified Development Code creates Military Lighting Overlay Districts (MLOD) within five miles of Camp Bullis/Camp Stanley, Randolph Air Force Base, Lackland Air Force Base or Martindale Army Air Field, under Sec. 04. Inside those overlay zones, essentially all outdoor lighting installed after the district's designation must meet strict standards: maximum correlated color temperatures of 3000K (MLR-1) or up to 4000K (MLR-2), full cutoff fixtures, and trespass-light caps at the property line, all administered by the Planning and Development Services Department. ' The same list exempts pre-existing legal fixtures, fossil-fuel-combustion lighting, emergency and law-enforcement lighting, vehicle and aircraft lighting, and federal or state facility lighting.

Outside the November 15-January 15 window, decorative holiday lighting on a property inside an MLOD reverts to the district's general standards and must comply with the CCT, shielding and foot-candle limits like any other fixture. This exemption is geographically narrow: it only reaches properties zoned into an MLOD, a designation applied only through the city's rezoning process near the four listed military installations. Neither this UDC lighting article nor the general San Antonio Code of Ordinances sets a citywide holiday-display duration limit outside these overlay districts; properties outside an MLOD are not subject to this November 15-January 15 window at all.

The director administers Sec. 04, and the Board of Adjustment may grant a variance or special exception from the section's requirements under subsection (23) where literal enforcement creates unnecessary hardship.