Today, Friday, September 11, 2026, the 25th anniversary of the attacks that in 2001 killed nearly three thousand people in New York, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania. In the Big Apple, as it happens for 25 years to this part, it will be a day dedicated to memory.
The main commemoration will be held, as every year, at Ground Zero, with the reading of the names of the victims and the moments of silence that will mark the times of the attacks. But during the day appointments will also involve other places in Manhattan and, through a series of initiatives, the rest of the city.
The 25th anniversary ceremony at 9/11 Memorial will begin at 8:30 on Memorial Plaza, where family members will read the names of 2,977 people killed in the September 11 attacks and six victims of the World Trade Center bombing on 26 February 1993. The ceremony is reserved for families, guests and authorities and will not be accessible to the public, but can be followed live online.
The first moment of silence will be at 8:46, the time when the American Airlines flight 11 hit the North Tower. Other moments of silence will follow, those reminiscent of the impact of the second plane against the South Tower, the attack on the Pentagon, the collapse of the South Tower, the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 in Pennsylvania and the collapse of the North Tower.
But this year there will be one more. For the 25th anniversary the 9/11 Memorial decided to add a seventh moment of silence, dedicated to people who died in the following years for diseases and consequences related to exposure to substances present at Ground Zero and during rescue, recovery and remediation operations.
It is a change that comes as the health consequences of the attacks continue to be a very present part of the history of September 11. This week the city has published over 170 thousand pages of documents on air quality and the risks known by municipal administrations in the months following the collapse of the Twin Towers, a story that New York had already followed in recent months.
The day of commemoration will actually start half an hour before the Ground Zero ceremony. At 8, on the Josie Robertson Plaza of Lincoln Center, more than 150 dancers and musicians will participate in the Table of Silence Project 9/11, the performance created by choreographer Jacqulyn Buglisi in 2011 and became one of the recurring events of the anniversary.
The performance will last about 50 minutes and turn the Lincoln Center Square into a space dedicated to memory and peace. This year will be opened by a new version of Requiem of Buglisi and will see the participation, among others, of the dancer Terese Capucilli and violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain. The event is free, open to the public without reservation until seats are exhausted and will also be streamed.
In Lower Manhattan, after the morning ceremony, the Perelman Performing Arts Center will open at 11:00 to welcome the families of the victims. At 15:30 he will host Sounds of Remembrance, a New York Philharmonic concert directed by Gustavo Dudamel along with Soldiers’ Chorus of the U.S. Army Field Band. Also in this case the available places are limited and access follows the indications provided by the official program of the 9/11 Memorial.
Shortly before, at 15:00, St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine, at 130 Liberty Street, will host an interreligious memorial service reserved for victims’ families and their guests. The church is located a few steps from the Memorial and has a direct relationship with the history of the attacks: the original building of St. Nicholas, which stood at the foot of the World Trade Center, was destroyed by the collapse of the South Tower. The new church, designed by Santiago Calatrava, was rebuilt in the same dial of Lower Manhattan and is today also a national sanctuary dedicated to the memory of September 11.
The commemorations will not be concentrated only around Ground Zero. From this week the LinkNYC kiosks in the five boroughs host Memory Markers: 9/11, a project of the city that connects tens of stories of September 11 to the places where they occurred.
Among these is that of a Midtown warehouse turned into Emergency Operations Center after the destruction of the city operating center that was in the World Trade Center 7. Another leads to Fresh Kills, in Staten Island, where after the attacks were transported and controlled about 1.5 million tons of material from Ground Zero. Other markers recall the ferries used to evacuate about 50 thousand people from Manhattan and over a thousand taxi drivers who offered free rides to rescuers.
The 25th anniversary also changed the way the city formally recognizes this day. On September 4, Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed an executive order that designates every September 11th as Citywide Day of Remembrance and Service. It is therefore not a decision limited to this year’s anniversary.
The order invites local agencies to organize moments of silence, ceremonies, educational programs and volunteer initiatives. In the commemoration, people who died in the following years for illnesses associated with the World Trade Center, as well as survivors, rescuers, workers engaged in recovery operations and their families are explicitly included.
A growing part of the anniversary initiatives is addressed to New Yorkers who on September 11 do not have a direct memory. According to the City Council, more than 30 percent of the city’s inhabitants were born after 2001 or was too young to remember the attacks. The City Council has allocated a million dollars to finance free visits to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum for students of public schools, with particular attention to those of the eighth grade, and other educational programs.
For those who have to cross Lower Manhattan today there will be very practical consequences. The NYPD has announced a strengthened security device for the presence of families of victims, former presidents and other authorities. From 6 a.m. traffic will be closed to numerous roads in the south of Canal Street and around the World Trade Center.
The Memorial perimeter will be protected by fences and security controls and those who are not invited to the ceremony will not enter. The NYPD asked New Yorkers to avoid driving to Lower Manhattan if possible. Metro line 1 will also skip the WTC Cortlandt stop during security operations. There will be some pedestrian crossings on Church Street and West Street.
There are no specific or credible threats related to the anniversary. The device will however be particularly extended both for the meaning of the 25th anniversary and for the presence of the authorities. In the same evening Rosh Hashanah will begin and the NYPD has planned a second security plan around the synagogues and other Jewish places of worship in the city.
When it gets dark, the memorial will finally be visible from a good part of New York. From sunset the two beams of the Tribute in Light will be lit, which reproduce in the sky the position of the Twin Towers and remain illuminated during the night until the dawn of 12 September.
It is the image that for years closed the anniversary of September 11 in New York. This year it will arrive at the end of a day in which, for the first time, the city will formally recall not only those who died in the attacks, but also those who suffered the consequences in the following years.
L’articolo Come New York remember on September 11, 25 years later proviene da IlNewyorkese.
