Boston Commemorates 200 Years as a City, Announces Bicentennial Commission

BOSTON — July 19, 2026 — Boston formally celebrates its 200th anniversary as a city with a ceremony, procession, and the unveiling of a new Commemoration Commission. Mayor Michelle Wu joined Council President Edward Flynn, organizer Councilor Kenzie Bach, and more than 30 civic, academic, indigenous, and labor leaders at Old South Meeting House on May 1, 2022, the exact bicentennial of the city's 1822 incorporation. Suffolk University historian Robert Allison detailed how the 1822 charter — drafted by Lemuel Shaw, dividing the city into 12 wards with a 48-member Common Council and a mayor — passed a town meeting vote of 2,700 to 2,080, noting the margin was closer than popular memory suggests. Wu announced that the Boston City Council had passed, and she had signed, an ordinance establishing a Boston Commemoration Commission to coordinate events through the city's 250th Revolutionary-era commemorations and toward the 400th anniversary of Boston's 1630 founding. The ceremony concluded with a procession led by the East Boston JROTC to City Hall Plaza, where Senator Lydia Edwards and Flynn read aloud the opening sentences of the 1822 Act Establishing the City of Boston and the city flag was raised.