University Heights Fall Festival: Free Saturday on Park Boulevard, Oct 17
Free UH neighborhood festival Oct. 17, noon–5 — pumpkins for Alice Birney, food trucks, Kairoa beer garden. Park Blvd & Madison.
The University Heights Fall Festival is the neighborhood’s annual Saturday on Park Boulevard: free to walk in, noon to 5, pumpkins for Alice Birney, food trucks, and a beer garden — not a ticketed carnival gate.
Overview
Friends of Alice Birney Elementary puts this on with the University Heights Garden Club. It benefits the 530+ kids at Alice Birney, a Title I public school where more than 40% of students come from low-income households. Pumpkin-patch purchases go to that same cause. Notion marked the row “Weekly”; the organizer site calls it annual. This card is the yearly UH street festival, not a repeating weeknight series.
Official details live on uhfallfestival.com. Activity and drink tickets are a separate layer from admission — presales are still “coming soon”, so we are not inventing a dollar amount for carnival games or the beer garden. For more around the county, browse the Hello San Diego event calendar.
What You Need to Know
Event: University Heights Fall Festival (Friends of Alice Birney Elementary + University Heights Garden Club)
When: Saturday, October 17, 2026 — 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Where: University Heights. GPS: Park Blvd & Madison Avenue, San Diego, CA 92116. The festival sits in the neighborhood around that corner — not a fenced fairground in a parking lot.
Cost: Free admission. Food trucks and market vendors take payment directly (no festival scrip required for food). Some activities are ticketed (face painting, butterfly experience, photobooth, carnival games, and drinks at Kairoa’s booze garden). Per-activity prices: not posted yet.
Tickets: Walk in free. Check the tickets page before you go if you want activity/drink wristbands — they have not launched as of this writing.
Ages: All ages, family-friendly. Accessible bathrooms on site. Alcohol is in the booze garden, not the whole street.
What to Expect
- Live music and entertainment on a local-artist stage (lineup on the site’s Stage page when they post it — we are not inventing names)
- Food trucks plus a local artisan vendor market
- Pumpkin patch for carving pumpkins (purchase supports Birney)
- Free fall arts and crafts and lawn games
- Ticketed extras when sales open: carnival games, face painting, photobooth, butterfly experience
- Craft beer and other drinks at Kairoa’s booze garden
Five hours is a full outing if you arrive near noon for parking and a pumpkin, or a shorter loop if you show up mid-afternoon for food and the stage.
Good to Know
- Parking: Free, but it is neighborhood street parking. Organizers say come early. GPS the Park & Madison pinch, then walk.
- Transit / bike: MTS #11 drops in front of the festival. Bikes are encouraged. No lockers or bag check.
- Bring: Reusable water bottle and a blanket to sit on. They say that explicitly.
- Pay: Card/cash at trucks and vendors. Don’t wait for a “food ticket” — those aren’t how food works here.
- Not a paid gate. If a reseller tries to sell you “admission,” that is not the organizer model.
Annual fundraiser on a UH Saturday. Show up, park once, and leave room in the car for a pumpkin.
