This winter's events will be headlined, of course, by the Ballarat Winter Festival, including the return of the public ice skating rink on Sturt Street, along with Sovereign Hill's Winter Wonderlights, the McDonald's Junior Basketball Tournament, Frolic Dark Rainbow and the Western Bulldogs' second Ballarat fixture.

It is the first time the extremely popular pop-up ice skating rink has returned to the CBD since 2019 after a lockdown-enforced break last year.

City of Ballarat Mayor Daniel Moloney said the calendar included events with both a niche audience and broad-based appeal.

"To think that a few years ago we were wondering whether Ballarat would get its skates on and it absolutely did in a huge way and putting that between Town Hall and Myer has been incredibly popular over the years. Pity we couldn't do it last year, but getting that all back will be great," he said.

"We're getting to a point now where we have to have pretty much capacity attendance especially with ticketed events, so even in cases where it needs to be a free ticket, then we're following the COVID requirements of having ticketed events where we can contact trace if need be for COVID reasons, but this is getting reasonably close to normal operations which is great to see."

Cr Moloney said the McDonald's Junior Basketball Tournament across the Queen's Birthday long weekend was one of the city's most financially beneficial winter events, bringing in 'a few million dollars'.

IN OTHER NEWS:

"The beauty of that event is that it brings thousands of junior basketballers to the city from our region and Melbourne and the the best part of that is that they have to bring their families with them," he said.

"Any of the accommodation providers will well know that basketball is one of the mainstays of winter, that is always a huge weekend and practically once those dates are out there, it's pretty much impossible to get an accommodation anywhere in town."

Cr Moloney said council hoped to see the city's businesses adopt the themes of the events taking place in the city, such as the Ballarat Winter Festival.

"There was a time when Ballarat, from a tourism perspective, used to get defensive about how cold we are, now we own it," he said.

"It is what it is, it's the cooler months and it's Ballarat and we're proud of it and we're still out celebrating it.

"Rug up and enjoy some of the warm winter meals and the open fireplaces our providers have to offer, it can be a fun time of year as well."

If you are seeing this message you are a loyal digital subscriber to The Courier, as we made this story available only to subscribers. Thank you very much for your support and allowing us to continue telling Ballarat's story. We appreciate your support of journalism in our great city.