As a parallel result of an IT Project aimed at determining accurate distances to more than 30 planetary nebulae using the extinction-distance method, we report here the serendipitous discovery of a giant halo around NGC 7027. We obtained the spectra of more than 60 field stars around each PN with the LDSS multi-slit spectrograph at the 4.2-m William Herschel Telescope (La Palma). In the spectra of the field around NGC 7027 we detected nebular lines of H I and [O III]. The variation of I(5007)/I(4861) with distance to the central star indicates that the emission originates in the object, implying that the ionized halo around NGC 7027 extends beyond 1 pc.