We Still Don’t Know What the National Mall Fireworks Show Will Cost

The Trump administration has not told the public what it costs to put on the “Largest Fireworks Show in History.”

Nor has it said whether American taxpayers will be footing the bill for the plan to break the world record on July Fourth.

Roughly 850,000 shells of fireworks are set to explode over the National Mall just before midnight on the semiquincentennial Saturday. The current record is held by a church in the Philippines, which launched just over 810,000 shells in 2016.

Fireworks company Pyrotecnico, known for its long history of designing large and sophisticated displays, is behind the show, which the Trump administration and celebration planning officials announced in mid-May.

Unlike in previous years, when the federal government paid for the National Mall’s annual fireworks show through a standard, publicly available contract, there is no record of Pyrotecnico receiving government money for this show.

In interviews with NOTUS, some of the nation’s leading fireworks sellers estimated that a world-record-breaking show would cost millions.

“You’re talking a many multimillion-dollar production, without a doubt,” said James Woods, the director of sales at Pyro Shows in Tennessee. Pyro Shows sent several fireworks technicians to Dubai in 2014, when the city set the world record for the largest-ever display at the time.

Woods estimated that some of the individual fireworks devices used in the National Mall show could cost anywhere from $50 to $1,000. If even 3 percent of the devices used in this show cost $50, that would total $1.3 million for those devices alone — a price tag that would ratchet up significantly the more elaborate the show is.

There is one federal government record for this year’s July Fourth fireworks: The Interior Department obligated about $1.5 million to Garden State Fireworks in December 2025, well before the announcement of plans to break the world record. Garden State Fireworks has managed D.C.’s July Fourth shows for the past decade and usually receives contracts between $250,000 and $300,000, according to government records.

It is not clear what role Garden State will play in this show or why it won a contract worth at least five times the normal amount, given that it is not the company hired to put on the massive production. Pyrotecnico’s contract is not publicly available.

Garden State, Pyrotecnico, Freedom 250 and the Interior Department did not respond to requests for comment.

This is not the only event the Trump administration and celebration organizers have failed to disclose finances for.

The events — including a prayer day on the National Mall, a UFC fight at the White House and the fireworks show Saturday — have been planned by Freedom 250, the public-private entity Trump created to manage and fund events around the 250th anniversary. This structure has made it impossible for the public to know whether taxpayer or private dollars are funding specific events, or whether it’s a mix of funds. It’s also impossible to know what each event costs.

Without access to any public disclosures, the nation’s fireworks industry is gossiping. Several told NOTUS that they will eagerly be streaming video from the show even while they manage their own productions across the country.

Others speculated that the fireworks display will include shells from Japan, which are rarely seen in the United States and can produce explosions of richer color and quality than any found domestically.

The universal conclusion, however, was the same: Any attempt to break the world record for the largest show ever is going to be expensive, fireworks experts told NOTUS.

Bob Kellner, the owner of Kellner’s Fireworks in Pennsylvania, offered this hypothetical: Imagine if every single one of the shells in the show consisted of the cheapest explosives used in a standard display, normally shot off just as “filler” over the course of a finale. The cost of just those explosives would be a minimum of $1.7 million, assuming they’re the cheapest Chinese-made fireworks costing around $2 each to import, Kellner speculated.

Larger, more sophisticated fireworks are considerably more expensive than Kellner’s hypothetical, because they consist of more expensive explosives, have a more complex structure, and require a more elaborate system for their launch.

That doesn’t account for the far more expensive parts of a show of this scale: the labor and the insurance, which would probably cost more than the product, he added.

The event comes with much fanfare — and as many restrictions. The Saturday show will take place in unusually high heat, nearly two hours later than usual, and after the president himself gives a speech. Visitors will have to submit to a security screening and leave behind all coolers, chairs, tumblers and bags bigger than a one-gallon clear zip-top container. No one can enter the mall after 6 p.m., meaning viewers are likely to be enclosed in the secure space for at least six hours if they want to watch the 40-minute show to its finale.

The reward for that wait? A fireworks display that will probably require teams of technical experts to manage, and feature explosions on a scope and scale not often seen in the United States.

When asked whether the total cost is more likely to be over or under $10 million, Kellner replied: “Oh over, surely.”