Halloween Lands on a Saturday This Year. Palo Alto's Calendar Is Built Around It.
October 22, 2026
What happens to a Thursday concert series when the holiday it wants to celebrate falls on a Saturday? In Palo Alto this year, the series moves to the Saturday and switches from evening to morning. The rest of the city's Halloween events then fall into a clear order around it. Halloween 2026 runs from Friday night on University Avenue to Saturday morning on California Avenue, and ends Saturday night on Middlefield Road. Each stop has its own time slot, and the schedule leaves room for trick-or-treating between them.
Read this way, the weekend has only two real decisions in it, and both are about timing.
Thursday Live on Cal Ave. is a free outdoor series run by the Palo Alto Recreation Foundation with the City of Palo Alto. This year it held six signature evenings, one Thursday a month from 5 to 8 p.m., through September. The October date was always meant to be different. The City's event page lists a special Saturday event on Oct. 31 with a Halloween and Oktoberfest theme. It runs from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. instead of the usual 5 to 8 p.m.
That three-hour midday slot is the key to the rest of the weekend. A series that spent all summer as an after-work evening on Cal Ave now finishes by 1 p.m. on Halloween. That leaves the afternoon and evening open for everything else.
Here is what the City lists for that morning:
The car-free part is now permanent. City Council made the Cal Avenue and Ramona Street closures permanent on March 10, 2025, so this event is held on a street that was already set up for people on foot.
The weekend starts the evening before, downtown. The City's annual Jack-O-Jaunt fills Lytton Plaza, at University Avenue and Emerson Street, on Friday, Oct. 30, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Visitors walk past the carved pumpkins and vote in three categories: Scariest, Cutest and Most Creative. Watching and voting are free.
You can also carve your own entry on site. A carving workshop runs from 3 to 5 p.m. that afternoon at the plaza. The City's Jack-O-Jaunt page says the $25 registration includes one pumpkin and a carving kit, and that no instructor leads the session. The Almanac's Halloween roundup lists the nonresident fee as $28.75. The timing means a pumpkin carved at 4 p.m. goes up for public voting about two hours later, a few steps from where it was carved.
Jack-O-Jaunt is also a block from the other permanent car-free stretch. The half-block of Ramona Street between Hamilton and University is pedestrian-only, so the plaza and Ramona make an easy loop on foot.
Friday evening has the weekend's first real overlap. On the same night, Oct. 30, Palo Alto Players opens previews of The Addams Family at Lucie Stern Theatre with a Pick-Your-Price Night, where audiences choose from three suggested ticket prices.
So Friday comes down to two options:
Both fit inside one weekend because the Players' Halloween event isn't on Friday. That leads to Saturday night.
The Addams Family runs at Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, from Oct. 30 through Nov. 15. The Almanac roundup lists tickets at $35 to $75. Opening night is Saturday, Oct. 31, so the official opening and Halloween fall on the same night.
Palo Alto Players has planned the evening around that. A post-show toast with champagne or sparkling cider and a Halloween party in the outdoor courtyard are free with a ticket to that night's performance. The theater invites people to come in costume, and its own description assumes a specific order for the night:
"Trick or treat with your friends and family, then bring them to the theatre for an evening of spooky fun!"
That one line spells out the weekend's shape. Trick-or-treating has the late afternoon and early evening. The theater picks up after it, in the same costumes.
The neighborhoods that fill the gap between Cal Ave and the theater are well known. In 2025, a Mercury News roundup of Bay Area trick-or-treat neighborhoods named Professorville, Crescent Park and Old Palo Alto as Palo Alto's main destinations. The tradition goes back years. In 2014, Palo Alto Online described crowds and elaborate displays across Old Palo Alto, naming Santa Rita, Waverley, Cowper, Lowell and Bryant streets. In 2018 the outlet reported Halloween street closures on Waverley Street, Santa Rita Avenue and Washington Avenue. That report described one night years ago. Check the City's current advisories before counting on any particular street being closed this year.
The other overlap is Saturday morning, and it's an easy one. The Downtown Palo Alto Farmers' Market runs every Saturday from 8 a.m. to noon, all year, on Gilman Street between Forest and Hamilton. Cal Ave's Halloween morning starts at 10. The two share a two-hour window, and the farmers market opens two hours earlier. Go to Gilman Street first, then drive or bike across town to Cal Ave, and you'll still have most of the window for the photo booth and pumpkin decorating before the 1 p.m. finish.
Here is the full Palo Alto sequence, starting with a Thursday library event before the main two days:
Read top to bottom, the list moves from Middlefield to University Avenue, over to Cal Ave, through the residential streets, and back to Middlefield. After Thursday, the schedule spreads the holiday across town over Friday and Saturday, and the only choices are the two overlaps. Showtimes for opening night, along with tickets, are listed on the Palo Alto Players show page.
If this weekend's route from Lytton Plaza to Cal Ave to Middlefield has you thinking about what your own corner of Palo Alto is worth, Yvette Stout is glad to talk it through in a private consultation about your home's value and a sale strategy built for it.
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