September 18, 2026
Made for the metro.
21 on the calendar

Festivals & Events in the Twin Cities

In a city with three months of summer and nine of everything else, we plan around the calendar more than most places. The State Fair is a regional anchor. Art-A-Whirl is a full Northeast neighborhood opening its studios at once. Twin Cities Pride is one of the largest in the country. Winter Carnival is older than the modern Olympics. Here is the year, in order.

Coming up next
Early October
Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon
Mid to late October
Twin Cities Film Fest
Throughout October
Anoka Halloween

Fall

Early October
Minneapolis to the St. Paul Capitol

Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon

A full race weekend that shuts down both downtowns and turns the river road into a spectator sport. The marathon runs point to point from near U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis to the State Capitol steps in St. Paul, alongside a 10 Mile, a half, a 10K and a 5K. Organizers call it the most beautiful urban marathon in America and the fall color along the Mississippi is the reason. You do not have to run it to enjoy it; pick a bridge and watch.

Minneapolis to the Minnesota State Capitol, St. Paul
Mid to late October
Ten days of independent film

Twin Cities Film Fest

Ten days of independent features, documentaries and shorts, with filmmakers in the room for a good share of the screenings. It is the metro’s largest general-audience film festival and the one where a small film gets a real local premiere rather than a single graveyard slot.

Twin Cities theaters
Throughout October
The Halloween Capital of the World

Anoka Halloween

Anoka trademarked the title Halloween Capital of the World and then spent a century earning it. The whole month fills with a medallion hunt, a house-decorating contest, bingo nights, a pumpkin expo and two separate parades: Light Up the Night after dark on the 17th, and the Grande Day Parade down Main Street on the 24th. Twenty miles up the river and worth the drive.

Main Street, Anoka
Mid to late October
Two weeks of live horror theater

Twin Cities Horror Festival

A fortnight of original horror performance, now in its fifteenth year: a dozen stage shows in rotation, a short film program, and lobby installations built to unsettle you before the show even starts. Fringe-scale companies making genre work on purpose, which almost nowhere else programs.

The Crane Theater, Minneapolis
Early November
Free all-day book fair

Twin Cities Book Festival

Rain Taxi fills Union Depot with well over a hundred publishers, presses, dealers and literary organizations for one free Saturday, plus a full day of author readings and conversations. Around six thousand people come through. If you want to understand how much small-press publishing happens in this state, this is the day it is all in one room.

Union Depot, St. Paul

Winter

Late January / Early February
St. Paul, citywide

Saint Paul Winter Carnival

Older than the modern Olympic Games. Began in 1886 as a response to a New York reporter calling St. Paul "another Siberia, unfit for human habitation." More than a century of ice palaces, Vulcanus Rex parades, and a thoroughly bonkers civic mythology involving fire and ice gods. One of the great American winter festivals.

Various St. Paul venues
Late January / Early February
Cultural festival, citywide

The Great Northern

A ten-day cultural festival celebrating winter, climate, and the life people make in cold places. Programming reaches across both cities, from outdoor light installations to indoor lectures to a winter cycling event on a frozen lake. The festival that explains what living here in February is actually about.

Various Twin Cities venues
Early February
Cross-country ski festival

City of Lakes Loppet Festival

A weekend cross-country ski festival in Theodore Wirth Park, with races, lantern-lit night skis, and an unreasonable amount of community spirit. One of the largest urban Nordic ski festivals in the country.

Theodore Wirth Park, Minneapolis
Late November through mid-December
Loring Park holiday market

Holidazzle

A six-weekend holiday market and festival in Loring Park, with a German-Christmas-market layout, ice skating, fire pits, and the city’s most concentrated dose of seasonal cheer. Free entry, frequent live music, and a warming tent that is the entire point on cold nights.

Loring Park, Minneapolis

Spring

May 1
Powderhorn neighborhood

May Day Parade and Festival

A community-built parade and Powderhorn Park festival run for decades by In the Heart of the Beast Puppet Theatre. Massive papier-mâché puppets, free, and one of the most genuinely Minneapolis events in the calendar. The parade route fills the streets of Powderhorn with thousands of neighbors.

Powderhorn Park, Minneapolis
Mid-May
Open studio tour, Northeast

Art-A-Whirl

The largest open-studio tour in the country, run by the Northeast Minneapolis Arts Association. For one weekend in May, hundreds of artists open their working studios across Northeast. Free, walkable, and one of the best snapshots of the city’s actual creative life. Bring cash.

Northeast Minneapolis

Summer

Father’s Day weekend, June
Art on the bridge

Stone Arch Bridge Festival

A juried art fair held on the Stone Arch Bridge and along the Mississippi riverfront, with a music stage, food, and one of the most genuinely beautiful settings of any art fair in the country. Free.

Stone Arch Bridge and Mill District
Late June
Free outdoor jazz, downtown St. Paul

Twin Cities Jazz Festival

Three days of free jazz on multiple stages in downtown St. Paul, anchored at Mears Park. Local headliners, national touring acts, and a downtown that fills up with people listening to live music. Free.

Downtown St. Paul
Late June
Loring Park + parade

Twin Cities Pride

One of the largest Pride festivals in the country, with the festival in Loring Park and the Sunday parade running through downtown. A real civic event the entire city participates in, regardless of identity. Free.

Loring Park and downtown Minneapolis
Mid-July
St. Paul, African American heritage

Rondo Days

A celebration of St. Paul’s historic Rondo neighborhood, the African American community whose heart was destroyed by the construction of I-94 in the 1950s. The festival commemorates the neighborhood that was and the community that endures, with a parade, food, music, and a deep historical exhibition.

Martin Luther King Park, St. Paul
Late July
Downtown Minneapolis

Aquatennial

A Minneapolis civic festival that has been running since 1940. Block parties, a torchlight parade, milk-carton boat races on Lake Bde Maka Ska, and a Saturday-night fireworks show over the Mississippi. The kind of summer festival that has shaped a city’s sense of itself.

Downtown Minneapolis
Early August
Art fair around the lake

Powderhorn Art Fair

A juried art fair that wraps around Powderhorn Park, with the South Minneapolis lake at the center. More artists, more affordably priced work, and a less corporate feel than the bigger Uptown Art Fair the same weekend. Free.

Powderhorn Park, Minneapolis
Early August
Hennepin and Lake

Uptown Art Fair

A 60-year-old juried art fair that fills the streets around Hennepin and Lake. Three hundred artists, blocks of food, two music stages, and the largest crowd of any Twin Cities art fair. Same weekend as Powderhorn, which means most people do both.

Hennepin and Lake, Minneapolis
Early August
Performance theater festival

Minnesota Fringe Festival

Eleven days of independent theater, comedy, dance, and performance across a dozen venues, mostly in Minneapolis. Tickets are cheap, the lottery-curated programming guarantees variety, and the festival is one of the largest non-juried performance festivals in the country.

Various venues, Minneapolis
Multiple Sundays, June through September
Car-free street festivals

Open Streets Minneapolis

A series of Sunday street festivals where a major Minneapolis avenue closes to cars and opens to pedestrians, cyclists, food vendors, and live music. Different neighborhoods host throughout the summer. The closest the city gets to a regular European-style streetscape.

Various Minneapolis avenues

Late Summer

Late August through Labor Day
The Great Minnesota Get-Together

Minnesota State Fair

The largest state fair in the country by daily attendance and the second-largest by total. Twelve days, almost two million people, and a calendar of food-on-a-stick, livestock barns, grandstand acts, the Miracle of Birth, the butter heads, and a sense of regional ritual that is genuinely hard to overstate. The fair is the centerpiece of the Minnesota year.

Minnesota State Fairgrounds, Falcon Heights
Read the full guide →

What festivals happen in Minneapolis and St. Paul?

We track 21 annual festivals across the year — 5 in fall, 4 in winter, 2 in spring, 9 in summer, 1 in late summer. They run from the Saint Paul Winter Carnival in late January to Holidazzle in December, with the heaviest stretch between Art-A-Whirl in mid-May and the Minnesota State Fair over Labor Day.

Which Twin Cities festivals are coming up next?

Next on the calendar: Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon (Early October), Twin Cities Film Fest (Mid to late October), Anoka Halloween (Throughout October). Each one is listed above with what it actually is and where it happens.

When is the Minnesota State Fair?

Minnesota State Fair runs Late August through Labor Day at Minnesota State Fairgrounds, Falcon Heights. It is the largest event on the Minnesota calendar and the single busiest stretch of the year for the metro.

What is the oldest festival in the Twin Cities?

The Saint Paul Winter Carnival, which began in 1886 — older than the modern Olympic Games. It runs Late January / Early February across St. Paul.