New York's fall festival season for 2026 includes 19 events tracked in this directory, all of them starting in either September or October. None of the 19 begins in November, even though the season's longest-running event does not close until November 8. That distinction, start date versus how long an event actually runs, turns out to matter more than a simple list of dates would suggest.
This guide is built entirely from the confirmed data behind this site's fall listings: what overlaps with what, which events are free, and which regions of the state a given weekend actually spans. It does not add attendance figures, founding history, or pricing beyond what is published, because none of that is confirmed in the underlying dataset.
September carries more than twice the load of October
Thirteen of the 19 fall events start in September, against six in October. That imbalance is driven partly by two long-running events that both open in September and then keep going. The Feast of San Gennaro runs September 17-27 in New York City, and The Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze runs select evenings from September 18 all the way to November 8 in Croton-on-Hudson. Because both are counted by their start date, September absorbs events that are still actually running well into October, and in the Blaze's case, into November.
The last weekend of September is the busiest single weekend in the fall calendar
Seven fall events are active at once on September 26-27: The Feast of San Gennaro and The Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze, both still running from earlier starts, plus Ithaca Apple Harvest Festival, The Long Island Fair, Hudson Valley Garlic Festival, Naples Grape Festival, and Atlantic Antic, which opens that Sunday. Spread those seven across the map and the range covers the width of the state: Old Bethpage on Long Island, Brooklyn and Manhattan in New York City, Croton-on-Hudson in the lower Hudson Valley, Saugerties further up the Hudson Valley, and Ithaca and Naples in the Finger Lakes. No single trip covers more than one or two of these regions, so this weekend is really a forced regional choice, not just a scheduling coincidence.
Labor Day week belongs to three upstate fairs and a Brooklyn parade
The first full week of September, September 2-7, holds its own four-way overlap. The Schaghticoke Fair in Rensselaer County, The Columbia County Fair in Chatham, and The Fonda Fair in Montgomery County all run the identical six-day window, and the West Indian American Day Carnival Parade in Brooklyn lands on the closing day, September 7. The three fairs are upstate, agricultural, and multi-day. The parade is a single-day event in New York City. Anyone weighing all four is choosing between three similar upstate fairs happening simultaneously, plus a completely different kind of event on the other end of the state.
Free events versus everything else
Five of the 19 fall events are confirmed free to enter: West Indian American Day Carnival Parade, The Feast of San Gennaro, Ithaca Apple Harvest Festival, Atlantic Antic, and New York City Village Halloween Parade. Only one event in this list publishes a specific price, the Long Island Garlic Festival in Riverhead, at $20 for an adult ticket.
The other 13 events, including The Schaghticoke Fair, The Columbia County Fair, The Fonda Fair, Adirondack Balloon Festival, The Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze, The Long Island Fair, Hudson Valley Garlic Festival, Naples Grape Festival, Hilton Apple Fest, Warwick Valley Applefest, LaFayette Apple Festival, New York State Sheep & Wool Festival, and the Oyster Festival in Oyster Bay, do not have a published price in this dataset. Note that the Blaze specifically requires timed, advance tickets even though the price itself is not published here, so it is not a walk-up event regardless of cost.
October's opening weekend splits the state in half
Hilton Apple Fest in Hilton, near Rochester, overlaps Warwick Valley Applefest in Warwick, in the Hudson Valley, on October 3-4. These two towns sit on opposite sides of New York, so this overlap is not a same-region either-or choice the way the Long Island and Finger Lakes events sometimes are. It is a straightforward choice between western New York and the lower Hudson Valley on the same two days.
Later in October, New York State Sheep & Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, October 15-18, overlaps the Oyster Festival in Oyster Bay, October 17-18, another Hudson Valley versus Long Island split. Both October overlaps also sit inside The Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze's long running window, so a Hudson Valley trip in mid-October can realistically combine the Blaze with either the Sheep & Wool Festival or, further out, the Oyster Festival, without the same either-or problem.
The season closes with New York City's only two events on this list
The New York City Village Halloween Parade on October 31 is free and closes out the fall calendar for new-starting events. It overlaps only the still-running Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze, which continues another eight days to November 8. New York City itself hosts two of this list's 19 fall events, the parade and The Feast of San Gennaro in September, both free and both concentrated in the city rather than spread across counties the way some of the upstate fairs are.
What the category tags add to the overlap picture
Eighteen of the 19 events carry a family category tag; the New York State Sheep & Wool Festival is the only one that does not. Ten of the 19 are tagged food-festival, including the Long Island Garlic Festival, The Feast of San Gennaro, Ithaca Apple Harvest Festival, Hudson Valley Garlic Festival, Naples Grape Festival, Atlantic Antic, Hilton Apple Fest, Warwick Valley Applefest, LaFayette Apple Festival, and the Oyster Festival, which means slightly more than half the fall calendar is organized around food rather than around agriculture in the working-farm sense. Only five carry the agricultural tag specifically: The Schaghticoke Fair, The Columbia County Fair, The Fonda Fair, The Long Island Fair, and the New York State Sheep & Wool Festival. If a county-fair-style event, livestock and produce rather than a food festival, is what you are after, those five are the actual short list, not the 19-event total this guide otherwise covers.
