Your Fall Starts Here: Renaissance Festival to Halloween

Activities Attractions Best of Shakopee Dining Events Festivals Outdoors

The first cold night usually lands in the second week of September. You notice it walking out of Canterbury Park after the last race, halfway across the lot, when the air has gone from warm to something that makes you wish you’d brought a jacket. Two weeks earlier you were sweating in the same spot.

Nothing announces it. The season just starts overlapping itself — an amphitheater show on a Friday and a Renaissance Festival Saturday, apples coming on while the racing meet runs out, and then one Saturday in early October when thirty-odd food trucks back into The Landing and the whole thing tips over into Halloween.

Here’s the season in the order you’ll run into it.

🍂 Fall in Shakopee at a Glance

  • Minnesota Renaissance Festival — weekends August 22 through October 4, plus Labor Day and Friday, October 2
  • Canterbury Park live racing — through Saturday, September 19
  • Mystic Lake Amphitheater — shows on the lawn all September
  • Sever’s Fall Festival — weekends from mid-September into late October, plus MEA break
  • Shaktoberfest at Badger Hill Brewing — Saturday, September 26
  • Shakopee Fall Food Truck Festival — Saturday, October 3, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
  • Halloween — Tricks and Treats and ValleyScare at Valleyfair, Phantom’s Feast, Scream Town
  • Shakopee Social District — open through October 31
  • Getting here — about 30 minutes from downtown Minneapolis on Highway 169 or County Road 101

🏰 Minnesota Renaissance Festival

Weekends, Saturday and Sunday, August 22 through October 4, 2026, plus Labor Day Monday, September 7, and Festival Friday, October 2. Gates open 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., rain or shine.

You come through the gate and the noise arrives before anything else — a hammer on an anvil somewhere, a lute, a man shouting about pickles. The ground is uneven and wooded and the paths bend, and the map is more suggestion than instruction. You will get lost at least once on a first visit. Everyone does. It’s part of it.

By eleven the jousting field is filling with people who got there early enough to sit. Woodsmoke hangs in the oaks on a cool morning, which is the honest reason September beats August out at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival — the same day is simply better when you’re not walking it in ninety-degree heat.

This is the 55th year: 16 stages of live entertainment, armored jousting, more than 250 artisans in the marketplace, and a theme-weekend structure that genuinely changes the character of a Saturday.

2026 Theme Weekends

  • Once Upon a Time — August 22 and 23
  • Highland Fling — August 29 and 30
  • Woofstock — September 5, 6 and 7, the Labor Day weekend, and yes, bring the dog
  • Bold North Adventure — September 12 and 13
  • Wine, Chocolate & Romance — September 19 and 20
  • Art Affair — September 26 and 27
  • Oktoberfest — October 3 and 4, closing weekend and the busiest of the season

Pick your weekend deliberately rather than just taking a date you happen to be free. One thing that catches first-timers: a parking pass is required to park on the festival grounds, so buy ahead at renaissancefest.com.

🏇 Live Racing at Canterbury Park

Through Saturday, September 19, 2026.

You hear the race before you see it. A bell, then a rolling sound off the far turn that builds for about twenty seconds, then a hard wall of crowd noise, then nothing. Somebody near you says a horse’s name out loud like it personally let them down.

Then it’s quiet again for twenty-five minutes, and that quiet is most of the appeal. You stand around with a program, watching horses walk out, forming an opinion you’ll be wrong about shortly. In August you’re doing that shoulder-to-shoulder. In September the crowd has thinned, the rail is open, and the light comes in low and gold across the infield for the last hour of the card.

The meet at Canterbury Park runs into the third week of the month and then it’s finished until spring. Come Saturday if you want the noise, Thursday if you want room.

September Race Card

  • Thursday, September 3 — Thursday night racing
  • Saturday, September 5 — Minnesota Festival of Champions, the night for Minnesota-bred horses
  • Sunday, September 6 — Best in Show, the dog-race finale, and exactly as undignified as it sounds
  • Thursday, September 10 — Thursday night racing
  • Friday, September 11 — Concert series: Eli Young Band and LANCO
  • Saturday, September 12 — Saturday night racing
  • Wednesday, September 16 — Wednesday night racing, the odd one on the calendar
  • Thursday, September 17 — Thursday night racing
  • Saturday, September 19 — Fan Appreciation Day, closing day of the meet

The card shifts, so confirm post times on the Canterbury Park events calendar before you drive out. The card casino and event center run year-round, so the building doesn’t go dark when the meet ends.

🎶 Mystic Lake Amphitheater

September shows at 700 Canterbury Road.

A mile up the road, Mystic Lake Amphitheater keeps going into September, and the lawn on a September night is a different animal than the lawn in July. Nobody’s overheating. You want the blanket you brought.

The thing most people get wrong is arriving forty minutes before doors and sitting in a line of cars. Shakopee is close enough that the hour before the show is the good part — eat downtown, walk the block, then drive over. The lot empties all at once afterward regardless, so whatever you save on the front end you hand back at eleven o’clock. Mystic Lake Casino Hotel runs a complimentary shuttle from the resort, which is the move if you’d rather skip the lot entirely.

  • Tuesday, September 1 — Wu-Tang Forever: The Final Chamber
  • Friday, September 4 — Slayer: Reign In Blood 40th Anniversary
  • Saturday, September 5 — 93X Half Assed Morning Show Summer Bash featuring Creed
  • Sunday, September 13 — Dan + Shay: The Young Tour
  • Tuesday, September 15 — Lil Wayne
  • Saturday, September 19 — Iron Maiden: Run For Your Lives
  • Thursday, September 24 — Staind
  • Saturday, September 26 — Pitbull

The amphitheater keeps adding dates through the season, so check the full Mystic Lake Amphitheater schedule for everything currently on sale.

🌽 Corn Mazes, Orchards and Apple Picking

Sever’s Fall Festival

Weekends from mid-September into late October, plus the MEA-break Thursday and Friday. Open 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

There’s a specific kind of October Saturday that starts at a corn maze and ends with everyone quiet in the car. Sever’s Fall Festival is engineered for it. The maze is the one every other maze in Minnesota gets measured against, and it takes half an hour if you actually do the challenge and five minutes if you decide you’re done.

The giant slide, the corn pit, the jumping pillows and the pumpkin blasters handle the rest of the afternoon without any help from you. Add pig races, a hay ride and a petting zoo, live entertainment, and better than a dozen food vendors doing roasted corn and caramel apples. Buying online saves a few dollars over the gate, and a season pass pays for itself on the second visit.

Ferguson’s Minnesota Harvest

If you’d rather pick than climb, Ferguson’s Minnesota Harvest in Jordan puts you in the rows with a bag — Honeycrisp, Haralson and Zestar! among the varieties. Apples first, then the pumpkin patch, then the wagon ride back. Apple Blossom Park handles the kids with a corn maze, gem mining, duck races and apple cannons.

Worth knowing: the country store, bakery, bistro and hard cider bar don’t require admission. You can pull in on your way home from somewhere else, get a cider flight and a caramel apple, and be gone in twenty minutes. Admission is only for the orchard and the park.

Minnesota’s Largest Candy Store

Minnesota’s Largest Candy Store is stranger than anyone tells you. Aisles of soda you’ve never heard of, murals, an animatronic band playing to nobody, and in fall a wall of local apples, pumpkins and baked goods out front. You go in for ten minutes. You do not leave in ten minutes.

🍺 Shaktoberfest at Badger Hill Brewing

Saturday, September 26, 2026.

An Oktoberfest-inspired bash at Badger Hill Brewing near Canterbury Park — seasonal brews, a 5K fun run and walk, live music and games. Check Badger Hill’s Facebook page for the schedule as it firms up.

🚚 Shakopee Fall Food Truck Festival

Saturday, October 3, 2026, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. at The Landing, 2187 County Road 101.

The move is to walk the whole line before you commit to anything. It takes ten minutes and it will change your mind twice. Somewhere around the middle you’ll smell frybread and stop caring about your plan.

The Shakopee Fall Food Truck Festival puts more than 30 trucks along the river at The Landing. Domestic beer is for sale and local vendors set up alongside. There’s a large lot off the west entrance; when it fills, Memorial Park sits next door and it’s a short walk.

New this year: Shak-O-Lantern joins the festival. From 2 to 4 p.m. there’s a trunk-or-treat and fall programming for kids, which is the reason to come at noon instead of five and just stay put.

Live Music

  • 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. — Basic & Boring
  • 2 to 4 p.m. — Lili Horizon
  • 5 to 8 p.m. — The Band of 10,000 Mistakes

The 2026 Food Truck Lineup

  • Al & Mrs. Al’s Kettle Corn
  • Amazing Momo
  • Bad Rooster
  • Butcher & Bartender
  • California Dip & Eat
  • Caribbean Fusion
  • Come & Get It
  • Corn Hole
  • Cousins Maine Lobster
  • Deep Roots Concessions
  • Don Ramon
  • Eggroll Queen
  • Game Day Grub
  • Hasta La Pasta
  • I & E Treats
  • Kao Ping
  • Kona Ice
  • Kosharina Egyptian Cuisine
  • Las Twins Mexican Cuisine
  • Matt’s Bar
  • Mister Lemonade
  • OG Zaza
  • Original Hockey Mom Brownies
  • Paulson’s Pronto Pups
  • Philicious Phillys
  • Potter’s Pasties
  • Pow Wow Grounds Frybread Factory
  • Pretty Great Cakes
  • Rollin Nolen’s BBQ
  • Samosa Sambusa
  • Shoo-Ga
  • Tater Top Food Truck
  • The Purple People Feeder
  • The Twisted Scoop
  • Trio Plant Based
  • Unbakeable
  • Waffle Bar Food Truck
  • Yeti’s Ice & Fizz

🎃 Halloween in Shakopee

Tricks and Treats at Valleyfair

The daytime, not-too-scary version. Kids in costume, trick-or-treating along the midway, seasonal crafts, live entertainment and costumed characters, all folded into regular Valleyfair admission. Wear the costume; that’s the point.

ValleyScare at Valleyfair

After dark the same paths turn into something else — fog, mazes, scare zones, and actors who have gotten very good at using your peripheral vision against you. The coasters keep running overhead the whole time, which somehow makes it worse.

Valleyfair is under new ownership this year as part of Enchanted Parks, and 2026 dates for both events haven’t posted yet. Follow Valleyfair on Facebook and watch Valleyfair’s website — dates usually go up in late summer.

Phantom’s Feast

Select dates October 16 through November 1, 2026.

Phantom’s Feast uses the Renaissance Festival grounds after the season ends, which matters more than it sounds like it should. Those woods are unsettling in daylight. Tickets include entertainment, a meal, beverages and a souvenir mug, and a ghost hunt follows each show — out in the dark, on ground you were cheerfully eating turkey legs on a month earlier.

Scream Town

Twenty minutes west in Chaska, Scream Town is in its 22nd year with 13 attractions and the Abandoned Hayride, which delivers precisely what the name promises. There’s a midway with food and live shows for the stretches when you need to stand somewhere lit. Don’t bring anyone who won’t forgive you for it.

🥂 Shakopee Social District

Open through October 31, 2026.

Buy a drink from a participating bar or restaurant and you can carry it through the designated area — sidewalks, plazas and participating businesses in historic downtown and the Canterbury entertainment district. It’s a good way to handle the hour before an amphitheater show, and it closes for the season at the end of October. Boundaries and participating businesses are posted by the City of Shakopee.

🍽️ Where to Eat and Drink

Downtown is small enough to walk the restaurant stretch in ten minutes and decide with your eyes, so do that before you commit. By October the patios have thinned out and the argument for a booth wins on its own.

Historic Downtown

Near Canterbury Park

Three Taprooms

  • Badger Hill Brewing — near Canterbury, laid-back, patio while it lasts
  • Shakopee BrewHall — downtown in a building with 1840s bones, something on the calendar most weeks
  • Mana Brewing — small-batch beer and stone-fired Neapolitan pizza, easy with kids along

More at Eat & Drink in Shakopee.

📅 One Perfect Fall Saturday

If you only get one day here, this is the order that works. It’s built around Saturday, October 3 — the one weekend the calendar stacks up on itself, with Oktoberfest closing the Renaissance Festival and the food trucks down on the river.

  • 9 a.m. — Renaissance Festival gates. Get there at open, not at noon. The first two hours are the only ones where the lanes aren’t shoulder-to-shoulder, and the jousting field still has seats.
  • Noon — Leave. Really. You’ll want to stay, and you should go anyway, because the trucks are best in the early afternoon.
  • 12:45 p.m. — The Landing. Walk the whole line of trucks first. Eat in two rounds instead of one. Lili Horizon starts at two.
  • 2 p.m. — Shak-O-Lantern. If you brought kids, this is the two-hour window that earns the whole day.
  • 4:30 p.m. — Downtown. Ten-minute walk end to end. Get a pint at Shakopee BrewHall or a booth at O’Brien’s and let everybody sit down.
  • 7 p.m. — Pick your ending. Back to The Landing for The Band of 10,000 Mistakes until eight, or over to Valleyfair once the sun’s down and the fog machines come on.

Frequently Asked Questions

When is the Minnesota Renaissance Festival in 2026?

Weekends from August 22 through October 4, 2026, plus Labor Day Monday, September 7, and Festival Friday, October 2. Gates are open 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., rain or shine. It’s the festival’s 55th year, and a parking pass is required to park on the grounds.

When does horse racing end at Canterbury Park?

Live racing runs through Saturday, September 19, 2026, closing with Fan Appreciation Day. The September card includes Thursday and Saturday nights plus a Wednesday night on September 16. The card casino and event center stay open year-round.

When is the Shakopee Fall Food Truck Festival?

Saturday, October 3, 2026, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. at The Landing, 2187 County Road 101 in Shakopee. More than 30 food trucks, three live music sets, local vendors, and the new Shak-O-Lantern trunk-or-treat from 2 to 4 p.m.

What’s the best weekend to visit Shakopee in the fall?

The first weekend of October. The Food Truck Festival lands on Saturday, October 3, and the Renaissance Festival closes with Oktoberfest that same weekend, with Halloween events already running. Book lodging early, because that weekend moves.

Are there Halloween events in Shakopee for young kids?

Yes. Valleyfair’s Tricks and Treats is the daytime, costume-friendly version, with trick-or-treating and crafts included in admission, and the Shak-O-Lantern trunk-or-treat at the Food Truck Festival runs 2 to 4 p.m. on October 3. ValleyScare, Scream Town and Phantom’s Feast are built for older kids and adults.

Where can you go apple picking near Shakopee?

Ferguson’s Minnesota Harvest in Jordan has pick-your-own apples including Honeycrisp, Haralson and Zestar!, plus a pumpkin patch, corn maze and Apple Blossom Park. The farm market, bakery and hard cider bar don’t require admission.

How far is Shakopee from Minneapolis?

About 30 minutes by car from downtown Minneapolis, roughly 25 miles southwest. There’s no light rail connection, so plan on driving and allow extra time on Highway 169 and County Road 101 on event days.

Plan Your Fall Getaway

The Renaissance Festival’s last day and the food trucks land within a day of each other, and then the calendar thins out fast. The orchards go a few more weeks. The haunts run to Halloween. After that it’s quiet on Lewis Street until the lights go up.

Plan a fall getaway to Shakopee! Shakopee is home to Valleyfair, Canterbury Park, Mystic Lake Amphitheater and the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. It’s also conveniently located to area destinations like Chanhassen Dinner Theatres and Mystic Lake. Pick your weekend on the Shakopee events calendar.

Book your stay in Shakopee today!

Dates, hours and lineups change. Confirm directly with each venue before making plans. Links were accurate at time of publication.