Countdown Fireworks: How to Time Your Finale for Midnight (Without Stress)

Wondering how to time fireworks for midnight, or how to plan a countdown fireworks display? Wondering how to build your New Year’s Eve fireworks for 2 minutes before midnight? We guess that's because you’ve probably discovered the great annual tradition of slightly-missed finales.

Too early: finale goes off, everyone shouts “Happy New… oh, we’ve got two minutes left.”

Too late: Big Ben’s been and gone, the telly’s finished, your finale finally starts as people head off to fill their freshly drained glasses.

The good news is you don’t need a stopwatch in one hand and a nervous breakdown in the other. With a bit of planning – and the right kind of fireworks – you can make your countdown fireworks land bang on midnight without making it a faff.

This guide walks through how to:

• Pick the right type of finale

• Work out how long your fireworks actually last

• Build a simple running order backwards from midnight

• Fire it calmly instead of in a blind panic

And yes, we’ll show you exactly where Epic Fireworks’ New Year packs and compound barrages make life a lot easier.

The Two Big Rules of Countdown Fireworks

Before we get clever, there are two simple truths:

1. New Year’s Eve has a specific legal window.
   On normal days you can only let fireworks off until 11pm, but on New Year’s Eve you’re allowed up to 1am on New Year’s Day.
   So you’ve got room to play with, but you should still aim to be done well before you’re technically allowed to keep going.

2. You time the finale by working backwards.
   You don’t stand there thinking “shall I light it now?”. You decide what your finale is, find out its run time, then count back from midnight to work out when to light it.

Everything else is just detail.

Choose Your Finale First

Trying to time a finale when your “big finish” is five random rockets and three loose cakes is a recipe for chaos.

Make life easy: pick one main finale piece.

Best options:

• A big single-ignition finale barrage (cake)

• A compound cake (several cakes fused together in one box)

Epic’s New Year packs are built around exactly this idea – they always have one or two centre-piece barrages designed to look like a mini professional show when you fire them solo.

Why it helps:

• One fuse = predictable timing

• The whole thing is designed to build to a finale on its own

• You can test the timing in advance by watching the product videos on the Epic site

Think of this as your “Big Moment box”. Everything else just leads up to it.

Work Out How Long Your Fireworks Actually Last

You can’t time anything if you don’t know how long it runs for.

Luckily, Epic doesn’t just say “it’s amazing, trust us” – products list shot counts, durations and videos so you can get realistic timings.

For each key piece (especially your finale):

1. Check the stated duration on the product page.

   • Many big New Year compounds will say something like “approx. 55 seconds” or “70 seconds”.

2. Watch the video once and stick a mental note on it: “about a minute”, “just over a minute and a half”, etc.

3. If you’re using more than one barrage in the finale, add their run times together.

Be realistic. If the page says “60 seconds” and you count 50–55, treat it as 50 seconds for planning.

A few patterns you’ll see a lot:

• Small to mid-size barrages: 20–40 seconds

• Larger stand-alone cakes: 35–60 seconds

• Compounds / mega-cakes: 60–120 seconds

Epic’s “Top 10 Must-Have Fireworks for New Year’s Eve” and “Best Barrages for Any Budget” posts both give run-time hints and effect descriptions that make this even easier.

Work Backwards from Midnight

Once you know how long the finale lasts, timing becomes dead simple:

1. Decide what time “midnight” is for your display

   • Actual midnight, or a “fake midnight” earlier for kids.

2. Subtract your finale duration from that time.

3. Light the finale a tiny bit early, not late.

Concrete examples:

Example A: 1-minute finale

• Finale lasts ~60 seconds

• You want the last shells breaking at 00:00

• Light at 23:58:45 to 23:59:00

Example B: 90-second finale

• Finale lasts ~90 seconds

• Light at 23:58:30 if you want the thick of it during the last minute

• Light at 23:58:00 if you’re happy for the finale to peak just before midnight and finish on the stroke

Nobody will complain that your biggest moments were in the final 60–90 seconds around midnight. They will notice if you fire your best bit at 23:56 and then follow it with three sad fountains.

Think “final minute or so is dense and exciting”, not “the last bang must be at 00:00:00.0 exactly or we’ve failed as a family”.

Build a Simple Running Order Around the Finale

With the finale sorted, you can now sketch the rest.

Here are three templates that work well with Epic-style packs.

A. The 10-Minute “Mini Show”

Perfect for a proper gathering where you want it to feel like an event.

• 23:50–23:54 – Warm-up

  • 2–3 smaller barrages, fountains, mines or roman candles.

  • Aim for 3–4 minutes total. This gets everyone outside and excited.

• 23:54–23:57 – Middle section

  • One medium barrage or compound – something with a steady pace and varied effects.

  • 3 mins ish.

• 23:57–23:58 – Breather / reset

  • Quick pause to let smoke drift, check any stakes/boards, check the time.

• 23:58–00:00 – Finale

  • Your big compound / finale barrage, timed as per the earlier step.

Epic’s New Year packs are built for this: warm-up cakes, solid mid-tier pieces, then the big ones.

B. The 5-Minute “Punchy Countdown”

Ideal for small gardens, tight budgets or “quick, everyone outside now”.

• 23:56–23:58 – Single good barrage or two smaller ones back-to-back

• 23:58–00:00 – Finale compound or standout barrage

Two boxes, four or five minutes total, everyone happy. No faffing, no sprinting down the garden with ten fuses on the go.

C. The 2-Minute “Micro Show”

Sometimes you’ve just got a couple of serious cakes and a house full of people who mainly care about the snacks.

• 23:58–23:59 – One high-energy barrage

• 23:59–00:00+ – Second, even better barrage (or same-level) as the main finale

Light the first about 1½ minutes before midnight, the second bang on the minute, and your “display” is two very strong boxes instead of ten random bits that nobody remembers.

Make It Stress-Free on the Night

Even the best plan can go sideways if you’re trying to do everything yourself with a torch in your teeth.

A few practical tricks:

Have a timekeeper and a lighter

• One person’s job is literally “hold a watch / phone and shout when to light”.

• Another person’s job is “do the lighting”.

• They should not be the same person if you can help it.

Give the timekeeper a simple crib sheet: “Light Piece 1 at 23:52, Piece 2 at 23:56, Finale at 23:58:30”. Job done.

Lay out the fireworks in order

Before anyone arrives, set everything out in firing order, with labels or a simple marker on each cake: 1, 2, 3, FINALE.

Epic’s DIY display packs include firing orders – especially handy if you’d like someone else (us) to do the thinking while you do the lighting.

Use single-ignition barrages wherever you can

Every extra fuse you add under time pressure is an invitation for something to go wrong.

Big single-ignition barrages are ideal because they turn a whole sequence into one ignition.

• Less running around

• Less chance of mis-timing

• Fewer opportunities to knock something over or accidentally skip a firework

Don’t cram everything into the last three minutes

Your finale should be the biggest, not the longest.

It’s much nicer to have 5–10 minutes total, with the last minute really going for it than to try and fire every single firework you own between 23:59:30 and 00:00 and end up with half of them going off after the hugs.

A good display is like a good song, it has pace and tempo changes to create atmosphere and emotion.

Countdown Fireworks FAQ (So You Don’t Have to Google Mid-Party)

Should I light fireworks exactly at midnight or just before?

Just before. Light your finale 30–90 seconds before midnight, depending on its length, so the peak of the show lands on the countdown and the first minute of the New Year, not after the cheers have died down.

Is it better to have lots of little things or one big finale?

For timing? One big finale every time. Lots of little bits are fine for earlier in the night, but when it comes to midnight, one serious cake or compound is much easier to time and looks better.

What if I mess it up and light too early?

Nobody really cares as long as the last minute feels big. Worst case, laugh it off, throw in a bonus cake or rocket, and claim it was a “two-part finale” all along.

What about the legal curfew on New Year’s Eve?

You’re allowed to let fireworks off until 1am on New Year’s Eve/Day, so you’ve got a safe buffer if you run a bit over. Just remember that “legal” and “neighbour-friendly” are not always the same thing – try to keep the main noise centred around midnight, not 12:45am.

The Takeaway: Plan Backwards, Enjoy Forwards

New Year’s Eve fireworks don’t have to be a gamble.

If you:

• Pick one proper finale piece,

• Check its run time,

• Work backwards from midnight, and

• Build a simple running order with a couple of warm-up cakes…

…you’ll already be doing more planning than half the country.

Epic Fireworks is there to make the rest easy, with:

• New Year packs and compounds that are practically labelled “use me for the finale”,

• Blog guides highlighting run times, effect types and ideal roles in a display, and

• Enough video demos to let you plan your countdown like you’ve been doing it for years.

So this year, instead of shouting “LIGHT IT! LIGHT IT! LIGHT IT!” at a panicking friend with a box of assorted chaos, do yourself a favour:

Decide the finale now.

Check how long it lasts.

Write “Light this at 23:58:30” on the lid.

Then, when the countdown starts, you can actually enjoy it – safe in the knowledge that your fireworks are about to hit the moment bang on cue.