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 what that actually feels like, 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 Festival Friday, October 2
  • Canterbury Park live racing — through September 19, closing with Fan Appreciation Day
  • Corn mazes and orchards — Sever’s Fall Festival weekends from mid-September into late October; Ferguson’s Minnesota Harvest all fall
  • Shakopee Fall Food Truck Festival — Saturday, October 3, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. at The Landing
  • Halloween events — Tricks and Treats and ValleyScare at Valleyfair, Phantom’s Feast, and Scream Town in Chaska
  • Getting here — about 30 minutes from downtown Minneapolis via Highway 169 or County Road 101. No transit connection, so plan on driving.
  • Best weekend — Saturday, October 3, when the Food Truck Festival and the Renaissance Festival’s final weekend land together
  • Where to stay — hotels in Shakopee fill on Renaissance Festival weekends, so book ahead

🏇 September Racing Is the Racing to Come For

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 & 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.

🎶 A Show Night at the Amphitheater, and the Hour Before It

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.

September Shows at 700 Canterbury Road

  • 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

That’s September, but the amphitheater books straight through the warm months and keeps adding dates, so check the full Mystic Lake Amphitheater schedule rather than just the fall handful. Mystic Lake Casino Hotel runs a complimentary shuttle from the resort, which is the move if you’d rather not deal with the lot at all.

🏰 Fifty-Five Years of Getting Turned Around in the Woods

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, more than 250 artisans in the marketplace, armored jousting, and a theme-weekend structure that genuinely changes the character of a Saturday.

  • Season — weekends, Saturday and Sunday, August 22 through October 4, plus Labor Day Monday, September 7, and Festival Friday, October 2
  • Hours — 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., rain or shine
  • Theme weekends — Once Upon a Time, Highland Fling, Woofstock, Bold North Adventure, Sign Language Saturday, Wine, Chocolate & Romance, Art Affair, Festival Friday, and Oktoberfest
  • Parking — a parking pass is required to park on the festival grounds, and buying ahead is the detail that catches first-timers

Pick your weekend deliberately rather than just picking a date you happen to be free. Woofstock brings dogs. Highland Fling brings pipes. Oktoberfest closes the whole thing out on the last weekend, which is also the busiest. Dates and tickets are at renaissancefest.com.

🌽 The Afternoon That Ends With a Kid Asleep in the Back Seat

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.

It runs Saturdays and Sundays from mid-September into late October, plus the MEA-break Thursday and Friday, which are the busiest days of the season. Buying online saves a few dollars over the gate, and a season pass pays for itself on the second visit.

If you’d rather pick than climb, Ferguson’s Minnesota Harvest in Jordan puts you in the rows with a bag. 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, so 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.

And a few miles on, 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.

🚚 Thirty Food Trucks on the River — Saturday, October 3

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, 2187 County Road 101, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Domestic beer is for sale and local vendors set up alongside. There’s a large lot accessible from 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 (Subject to change)

  • 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, From Costumes to Genuinely Unpleasant

There are two versions of Valleyfair in October and they share a parking lot. In daylight it’s Tricks and Treats: kids in costume, trick-or-treating along the midway, seasonal crafts, live entertainment and costumed characters, all folded into regular park admission. Wear the costume; that’s the point.

After dark the same paths turn into ValleyScare — 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 the park’s events page — dates usually go up in late summer.

Dinner With a Ghost Hunt Attached

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. Dinner is four courses with beverages and a show; the ghost hunt comes after, out in the dark, on ground you were cheerfully eating turkey legs on a month earlier.

The Serious End of the Spectrum

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.

🍺 Eating Downtown When You’re Cold and Done

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

Out by Canterbury

Three Taprooms

More at Eat & Drink in Shakopee.

One Saturday in Shakopee, Start to Finish

If you only get one fall day here, this is the order that works. It’s built around Saturday, October 3 — the one weekend the calendar stacks up on itself.

  • 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 and the festival will still be there tomorrow.
  • 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: trunk-or-treat and fall programming right on site.
  • 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.

Common Questions About Fall in Shakopee

When is the Minnesota Renaissance Festival in 2026?

Weekends from August 22 through October 4, 2026, plus Labor Day (September 7) and Festival Friday (October 2), 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 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. Over 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 the 3rd, the Renaissance Festival runs its final weekend, and Halloween events are already going. 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 all built for older kids and adults.

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.

After the First Weekend of October

The 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.

Shakopee is your destination for fall. Shakopee is home to Valleyfair, Canterbury Park, Mystic Lake Amphitheater and the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. Pick your weekend on the Shakopee events calendar.

Book your stay in Shakopee today!

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