Did Canada light Niagara Falls blue to celebrate Democrats’ midterm wins?

As major U.S. news outlets reported that the Democratic Party had gained a majority in the U.S. House and Senate in the 2026 midterm elections on Tuesday, an image (archived) circulated online that social media users claimed authentically showed Niagara Falls in Canada lit up in blue in celebration of the result.

One Threads user shared the image of Horseshoe Falls, part of Niagara Falls in Canada, lit up in blue and wrote, “Canada lights up Niagara Falls in blue, sending a powerful message of solidarity with the Democrats and their blue tsunami unfolding. 💙🌊🇨🇦”

The image also circulated on Facebook, Instagram and X (archived, archived, archived). Snopes readers contacted us about the claim.

Though the image appears to be genuine, the claim that Niagara Falls was lit up in blue to celebrate Democrats’ midterm wins is false. The Niagara Falls Illumination Board, a six-member U.S. and Canadian organization, decides what color to illuminate the falls every night, and there was no evidence it decided to celebrate the Democrats’ midterm wins on Tuesday.

Rather, according to the board’s schedule, it lit up the falls in teal on Tuesday for Alzheimer’s Awareness Month. According to the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America, the illumination board participated in its “Light the World in Teal” event that was part of the awareness month.

Sandy Silverstein, a spokesperson for the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America, wrote that Niagara Falls participated in the awareness event on Tuesday, the day after 1,783 other landmarks reportedly did so. Silverstein wrote in an email to Snopes on Wednesday:

Niagara Falls has been part of this initiative for a number of years and asked if they could light up November 3 this year because of a scheduling conflict. We are grateful for their continued efforts to raise Alzheimer’s awareness and show support for the families affected by it through participating in this program.

We contacted The Niagara Falls Illumination Board through Niagara Parks to confirm its online schedule was correct. We also contacted a Threads user who claimed to have taken the photograph of the blue light on Niagara Falls to ask when they did so. We await replies to our queries.

Snopes has not independently verified the source of the image that some social media users said showed Niagara Falls lit up in blue on Tuesday night.

The online artificial intelligence detectors Pangram, OpenAI’s Verify tool and Google’s Gemini SynthID scan found no traces of AI in the image, suggesting it was authentic — meaning not created with AI or digitally edited. The image displayed no obvious signs of AI generation.

Assuming the image was indeed authentic, the difference between the planned teal lights and the blue lights seen in the image could be a product of the colors’ natural proximity to each other or the lighting settings used on the camera that captured the image. 

It was also possible the photo showing the blue lights was taken on a different date. The Threads user who claimed to have taken the photo wrote:

I’m very happy for the USA and their election results but it’s wild to me how many people just stole the photo I took of the Falls, reposted it, and made up their own story and assumptions about when it was taken. I was showing my support for the blue wave, as others have done with sharing their “blue” photos, but I never stated when my photo was taken.

For further reading, follows Snopes’ 2026 midterm elections coverage here.

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