How we check market dates

Of the 94 markets listed, 67 have official 2026 dates and 27 are waiting on the organizer. Last full check: September 30, 2026.

Where dates come from

• The market organizer's own website comes first. If the organizer only posts elsewhere, we use the city, park district or official tourism board page.
• We do not take dates from review sites, social media reposts or other "best markets" lists. Those are where stale dates spread.
• Every listing shows the page we used and the day we checked it.

What "not announced yet" means

If the organizer hasn't published 2026 dates, we don't estimate them, even when a market opens on the same weekend every year. You'll see "2026 dates not announced yet" and, where the organizer's own records show them, last year's dates labeled with the year.

How listings stay current

A script re-opens every source page on a schedule, compares it with what we stored, and flags any market whose page changed, lost its dates or started mentioning 2026. A person then reads the flagged page and updates the listing. The script respects each site's robots.txt, waits between requests and only reads public pages.

"Open this weekend"

This list uses only official 2026 dates and, where the organizer states them, the days of the week the market opens. It can't know about one-off closures for weather, holidays or private events, so check the official site before you go.

Which markets get their own page

A market gets a separate page only when we have more to say than fits in the list: a venue, dates (this year's or last year's) and at least two sourced details worth knowing before you go. The rest appear in the state lists with their source link.