Changing leaves, cooling temps, and pumpkin pie — there’s just something special about fall.
As we approach Thanksgiving, the most popular holiday in the US, it’s the perfect time to bring communities together. And whether it’s a neighborhood, an artists collective, a social movement, or any other group, there’s nothing better than a classic fall festival.
Fortunately, you won’t have to look far for plenty of ideas to make your festival stand out. By taking a look at some of the event creators relying on Eventbrite, we’ve identified 26 great fall festival ideas for memorable harvest-time events.
Fall Festival Event Categories
Fall festival fundraising ideas
Tips on how to organize a fall festival
Fall festivals have a few special features that can make finding the perfect venue and getting everything ready a little tricky. You’ll want to take into account everything else you ordinarily would in picking a venue: capacity, cost, formality, amenities, etc. But there are some additional factors for you to think about as well.
🍂 Indoor/outdoor options: Fall festivals often take place in cooler weather, so it’s worth looking at both indoor and outdoor options. Ideally, you could find a venue with both indoor and outdoor spaces so you could move the event if there’s a last-minute change in the weather.
🍂 Extra space: Many of the fall festival ideas below require a lot of space. Whether it’s for a hay ride or lots of different booths, you’ll need more space than just capacity for enough guests.
🍂 Fall amenities: Pumpkin patches and cornfields are fantastic ways to add to the fall spirit, but only a few select venues will have them on-site. The availability of these amenities might vary depending on geography: California and Michigan have plenty of pumpkin patches, but you might have a harder time in Florida, for example.
🍂 Easy clean-up: From eating contests to bobbing for apples, some fall festival activities can make a mess. That’s why you may want to find a venue that has spaces that are easier to clean or that the venue owners don’t mind getting messy.
🍂 Include all ages: Everyone loves a fall festival — be sure to include a variety of activities for children and adults alike.
🍂 Seasonal food: Be sure to keep any food and refreshments in with the seasonal theme. With a hot apple cider and a slice of pumpkin pie, your attendees will already feel the fall spirit.
🍂 Stay organized: With an event timeline, you can ensure you book all your suppliers, food trucks, and booths well in advance.
By keeping all that in mind, you can be sure to have the best fall festival possible.
Plan your fall festival with Eventbrite today.
Fall festival booth ideas
Many fall festivals have a wide range of booths that supply attendees with food, drinks, and activities. You can have staff or volunteers operate these booths, but they’re also a great opportunity for you to reach out to your community and bring in some local vendors and collaborators.
1. Caramel apple decorating
Difficulty: ⭐⭐
Cost: 💸💸
Family Friendly: 👧👧👧👧
One of the most iconic fall foods is the caramel apple, but don’t stop at just serving them! You can make your booth into a fun activity by letting people decorate their caramel apples with nuts, sprinkles, coconut, or whatever else sounds good.
2. Volunteer sign-ups
Difficulty: ⭐
Cost: 💸
Family Friendly: 👧👧👧👧
No matter what group you’re bringing together, a fall festival is a perfect opportunity to get people excited about giving back to the community. Get in touch with a local nonprofit and have them bring some brochures and a sheet where people can sign up to volunteer a little of their time to a good cause.
3. Mask-making
Difficulty: ⭐
Cost: 💸💸
Family Friendly: 👧👧👧👧
Planning your festival before Halloween? You can help your attendees out by letting them make a mask for their costumes! They’ll have a personal bond with the mask they made themselves and a great story to come with it. Just make sure you have enough supplies so everyone has a chance to make one.
4. Hot chocolate and cider
Difficulty: ⭐
Cost: 💸💸
Family Friendly: 👧👧👧👧
Even if you don’t get lucky with the weather for your festival, hot chocolate and cider will warm everyone right back up. For adults, consider giving the option to add peppermint schnapps to their hot chocolate for a little fun twist. You can even partner with a local cider maker to bring a cider press so people can make their own drinks!
5. Fall candles
Difficulty: ⭐⭐⭐
Cost: 💸💸
Family Friendly: 👧👧
Not a lot of people these days have dipped their own candles, but it’s a fun activity that anyone can do. You can even add fragrance oils so the candles fill their home with fall scents when your attendees take them home, keeping your event present in their minds for a little longer.
6. S’mores station
Difficulty: ⭐⭐
Cost: 💸💸
Family Friendly: 👧👧👧👧
You’ll want to clear the idea with your venue if you plan to have an open flame, but a station where people can make their own s’mores would take your festival to the next level. Make sure to supply plenty of napkins and a nearby wash station so people can clean their sticky fingers when they’re finished!
7. Face painting
Difficulty: ⭐⭐
Cost: 💸💸
Family Friendly: 👧👧👧👧
This is great for kids, but don’t let it only be a children’s activity! Everyone can get their face painted as a fun way to get into the festival spirit. That’s why The New Akatsuki made sure to include it in their own fall festival.
8. Autumn crafts
Difficulty: ⭐
Cost: 💸
Family Friendly: 👧👧👧👧
Bring in local artisans to sell fall-themed crafts! If you have enough interested people, you could even make a fall-themed market like Damaria and Rocki B did with their fall festival. That lets people connect with the community and support local makers.
9. Leaf art station
Difficulty: ⭐⭐
Cost: 💸💸
Family Friendly: 👧👧👧👧
Let your attendees make art pieces out of colorful autumn leaves. Whether it’s gluing together a leaf turkey on a plate or creating something more abstract, your leaf art booth will quickly become the talk of the festival.
Fall festival game ideas
Booths alone aren’t enough to make a fun and exciting fall festival. Games will make your event more interactive and give your attendees lasting memories they can look back on fondly. Remember: interactivity significantly increases memory!
10. Pumpkin carving (or painting) contest
Difficulty: ⭐⭐
Cost: 💸💸
Family Friendly: 👧👧👧👧
A pumpkin-carving contest is the perfect fall festival game: it lets everyone express their creativity in a seasonal way, and your attendees have something great to take home with them at the end.
That’s why event creators like Kia Real Estate make sure their fall festivals always include it. To let kids participate without using any dangerous carving tools, you can make it a pumpkin-painting contest instead, like St. Luke Catholic Church does.
11. Lawn games
Difficulty: ⭐⭐
Cost: 💸💸
Family Friendly: 👧👧👧👧
From croquet to cornhole, there are dozens of lawn games you could include in your fall festival to liven it up. The more, the merrier — that’s why the MAKRS Society had a range of them at their own fall festival. To scale it up with the size of your event, you could even create a tournament where people try their hand at every lawn game and see who has the best overall score.
12. Potato sack race
Difficulty: ⭐
Cost: 💸
Family Friendly: 👧👧👧👧
A potato sack race is simple: You hop in a burlap sack and try to make it to the finish line as fast as possible. But it’s more challenging than it sounds! Since people can fall over and injure themselves in a race like that, make sure they have a soft, springy surface to tumble onto.
13. Hayride
Difficulty: ⭐⭐
Cost: 💸💸💸
Family Friendly: 👧👧👧👧
Take everyone for a ride on a hay wagon or tractor! This activity requires some specific equipment, but venues like farms might have everything you need. Make it even more fun by making it a haunted hayride like the FIERCE Society did, with plenty of spooky characters for your attendees to see along the way.
14. Corn maze
Difficulty: ⭐⭐⭐
Cost: 💸💸💸
Family Friendly: 👧👧👧👧
If you have a cornfield available like the Rockland Farm Alliance does, a corn maze can make for a truly iconic component of a fall festival. To make it even more fun, you could create stations throughout the maze where people can collect stamps or prizes and compare who completed more of the maze.
If there are no corn mazes in your area, you can rent an inflatable one!
15. Pumpkin bowling
Difficulty: ⭐⭐
Cost: 💸💸
Family Friendly: 👧👧👧👧
Who needs a bowling ball when you have a pumpkin? Just make some bowling pins with soda bottles and lay out a short alley for people to bowl their pumpkins down. You could even dress the pins up like turkeys for an extra fall feeling.
16. Bobbing for apples
Difficulty: ⭐⭐
Cost: 💸💸
Family Friendly: 👧👧👧👧
Bobbing for apples is a classic game for good reason: it’s fun, accessible to everyone, and healthier than a pie-eating contest. Make sure to lay a tarp around the game ahead of time to catch any water that spills out and prevent attendees from getting muddy if you’re outdoors.
17. Pumpkin ring toss
Difficulty: ⭐
Cost: 💸💸
Family Friendly: 👧👧👧👧
A pumpkin ring toss is like horseshoes: you try to toss a large hoop so it lands over a pumpkin. It’s a fun way to incorporate a fall theme into a game, and you can integrate it even more by letting winners take the pumpkin of their choice to carve at home.
18. Climbing wall
Difficulty: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Cost: 💸💸💸💸
Family Friendly: 👧👧👧👧
While some people might want to sit and make art, others might want to challenge themselves physically. You can give them an extraordinary experience by following Manzano Mountain Retreat’s example and providing them a wall to climb. (If your venue doesn’t have one, you can rent one!)
Fall festival fundraising ideas
As the holidays approach, people might feel more compelled to donate their time (or money) to a good cause. A fall festival is a great fundraising occasion for organizations that do great work, so here are some more fun charitable ideas that can support the cause of your choice.
19. Harvest potluck
Difficulty: ⭐⭐
Cost: 💸
Family Friendly: 👧👧👧👧
Fall is the harvest season, so it only makes sense to share the bounty with everyone. A potluck lets people bring what they can and eat what they want in the true sharing spirit of fall. You can even use locally-grown ingredients if you host it at a farm like Nature & Nurture Seeds did. Invite the whole community to enjoy the feast and charge a small fee to join so you can collect funds. You can also ask participants to make a little extra to share with a local shelter.
20. Pie-eating contest
Difficulty: ⭐⭐
Cost: 💸💸 (unless a local bakery donates the pies!)
Family Friendly: 👧👧👧👧
Almost everyone likes to eat pie, but can you eat a whole one? That’s what your contestants will find out at your festival’s pie-eating contest. Use local, seasonal fruits (or pumpkins!) to connect it to the local community. Using entry fees is a great way to raise money for charity like Celebrate Highwood did for their contest.
You can streamline any donations by creating a free event on the Eventbrite platform and setting it up for digital and mobile payments in advance.
Want to host your fundraiser with Eventbrite?
21. Cut-a-thon
Difficulty: ⭐⭐
Cost: 💸
Family Friendly: 👧👧👧👧
A cut-a-thon gets the whole community involved in helping out, especially the local haircutting professionals who can donate their time. During a cut-a-thon like the one Claremont Educational Foundation organized, attendees pay for a haircut, and the earnings go to charity.
Local stylists, in turn, get some exposure and may even gain a few new clients! Take it a step further and collect hair to donate to an organization like Locks of Love.
22. Apple picking
Difficulty: ⭐
Cost: 💸
Family Friendly: 👧👧👧👧
If your venue has apple trees, you could invite your guests to enjoy some autumn apple picking. Big Gay Hudson Valley did this at an orchard known for its delicious apples — see if there’s a similar venue near you! You can donate the apples you pick to a local food bank and ask attendees for monetary donations to share as well.
23. Turkey trot
Difficulty: ⭐⭐⭐
Cost: 💸💸
Family Friendly: 👧👧
A turkey trot is a fall-themed footrace, usually in support of a charitable cause. You can make yours even better by partnering with local businesses and offering exciting prizes. For example, the Minnesota Brewery Running Series gave every participant in their fall 5k a free craft brew. But make sure you bring plenty of water, too!
24. Baked goods sale
Difficulty: ⭐
Cost: 💸
Family Friendly: 👧👧👧👧
What’s a fall party without sweet treats? Partner with a local bakery to sell their creations at your festival and donate the proceeds to charity. With enough pumpkin spice mix, they’ll be able to make any baked goods fit the season’s theme. You could even have them sponsor your pie-eating contest if you choose to have one.
25. Themed movie screening
Difficulty: ⭐⭐
Cost: 💸💸
Family Friendly: 👧👧👧👧
As the evening grows darker, pass around some blankets and hot chocolate and invite everyone to settle in for a movie for a small donation. Choose a kid-friendly movie like Hocus Pocus or Casper if it’s a family event. Alternatively, you could pick a movie on the theme of the cause you’re raising funds for.
26. Pony rides
Difficulty: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Cost: 💸💸💸💸
Family Friendly: 👧👧👧👧
Whether or not you have an on-site paddock, as Charming Ranch does, you can still give pony rides. All you need is enough space to give everyone a short tour and some soft ground that won’t get damaged by the horseshoes. Just charge a small fee per ride and let everyone have a great time!
Make your fall festival a success
No matter which ideas you’ll incorporate into your fall festival, you have plenty of material here to get you started. The next step is getting enough people to show up!
That’s where Eventbrite can help you out. With a simple, efficient, and automated solution for reaching out to everyone you want to attend, Eventbrite marketing suite makes maximizing your festival attendance as easy as pumpkin pie.
