Halloween 2026 · family guide
Chinatown, the Fillmore and the Ferry Building all run free trick-or-treat events, and the big museums hold not-too-spooky days in late October. Our family guide has what is on, what it costs and what to skip with small kids.
When
TodayTonightTomorrowThis WeekendFriday to SundayThis WeekNext WeekFree Today3 free on our calendar todayOctober 2026Day by dayNovember 2026Day by dayDecember 2026Day by dayAll MonthsEvents by monthFull Calendar147 upcoming eventsGuides by Topic
Neighborhoods
Plan
Near MeWhat’s on and open around youOpen NowPlan My DayFog CheckWhat to wear, by neighborhoodRainy WeekendWhat’s indoors, what to wearIs It Still Open?Add Events to Your CalendarDay-Out Cost CalculatorWednesday, October 28 · San Francisco 3 days to Halloween
What's on this weekend, where to eat, drink coffee and see art, and which places have actually closed. Every date, price and address is checked against the source.
On 27 May 1937, pedestrians had the Golden Gate Bridge to themselves. Cars followed at noon the next day. San Francisco had voted for the $35 million bond in November 1930, and work began in January 1933.
Tolls paid the bonds off, the bridge district says, and they were retired on 1 July 1971. The district calls the color burnt red-orange. Wish you were here.
This weekend
Fri · 10 am · Thrive City (Chase Center)
Mission Bay
Fri · 3 pm · Sigmund Stern Grove
Sunset DistrictFree
Fri · 4 pm · Hayes Promenade & PROXY
Hayes ValleyFree
Fri · 6:30 pm · China Basin Park (Great Lawn)
Mission BayFree
Fri · 7:30 pm · War Memorial Opera House
Hayes ValleyFrom $30
Oct 30–31 · Dance Fridays
Bayview-Hunters PointFrom $20 plus fees (21+; prices rise by ticket tier)
Oct 30–31 · Dance Fridays
Bayview-Hunters PointFrom $20 plus fees (21+; prices rise by ticket tier)
Sat · 10 am · North Beach Branch Library
North Beach
Sat · 10 am · San Francisco Zoo & Gardens
LakeshoreFree with paid daytime zoo admission or membership
Sat · 10:30 am · Francisco Park, Children's Playground
Russian HillSuggested donation $10+ (no one turned away)
Sat · 11 am · Waverly Place (between Sacramento & Washington Sts)
ChinatownFree
Sat · 12 pm · Yerba Buena Gardens (Children's Garden)
SoMaFree (RSVP)
Sat · 4 pm · Fillmore Street
Western Addition & FillmoreFree
Sat · 5 pm · 24th Street, Calle 24 Latino Cultural District
Mission District
Sat · 6 pm · The Green Between, Burrows Pocket Park
PortolaFree (donations encouraged)
Sat · 7:30 pm · War Memorial Opera House
Hayes ValleyFrom $30
Sun · 9 am · Outer Sunset Farmers Market & Mercantile
Sunset DistrictFree
Nov 1–22 · Outpost Meadow, Presidio
PresidioFree
Sun · 10 am · Asian Art Museum
Hayes ValleyFree
Sun · 11 am · Market & Noe Streets
CastroFree
Sun · 11 am · Ferry Building Marketplace
Financial DistrictFree
Sun · 2 pm · War Memorial Opera House
Hayes ValleyFrom $30
Sun · 2 pm · Brava Theater
Mission District$25
Sun · 4 pm · Mission Dolores Basilica
Castro$5–$15
Sun · 5 pm · Bird & Beckett Books & Records
Glen ParkSliding scale
Tue–Sun 9:30am–5:15pm · through Jan 31 · de Young Museum
Golden Gate Park$40 adults
Tue & Thu 10am–2pm, Sat 8am–2pm · through Dec 31 · Ferry Building Plaza
Financial DistrictFree
Wed & Sun 7am–4pm · through Dec 31 · Fulton Plaza, Civic Center
Hayes ValleyFree
Wed–Fri 7pm–9:30pm · through Dec 4 · SF State Observatory, Thornton Hall
San FranciscoOpen to the public; no admission price listed
Daily 9am–9pm · through Oct 31 · Clancy's Pumpkins & Christmas Trees
Sunset DistrictVaries
Wed–Sun 11am–6pm · through Dec 17 · Transamerica Pyramid Annex Gallery
Chinatown
Thu–Sun 10am–5:30pm · through Apr 18 · The Walt Disney Family Museum
Presidio$15 adults, $5 youth (exhibition only)
Nov 1–22 · Outpost Meadow, Presidio
PresidioFree
Further ahead, day by dayOctober 2026November 2026December 2026All Months
Find your thing
Plan my day
Pick a neighborhood and a mood. We put together a day from the places in our directory and the events on our calendar: coffee, something to see, lunch, a walk and something for the evening.
Your day will appear here. Every stop links to a page we have checked. Opening hours change, so tap through before you go.
Neighborhoods
Boundaries: DataSF Analysis Neighborhoods. Pins mark the neighborhoods we cover.
Tap a neighborhood
Hover or tap a pin to see what's on and what's worth it there.
Neighborhood
Hayes Valley is what happens when you take down a freeway.
Neighborhood
The Main Library and the Asian Art Museum face Civic Center Plaza, across from City Hall, and host some of the city's best free events for families.
Neighborhood
The Sunset is the city's biggest residential district: mile after mile of pastel rowhouses laid over sand dunes between the park and Lake Merced, built mostly between the 1920s and 1950s, and now one of the most diverse and family-heavy parts of San Francisco.
Neighborhood
The Marina is flat, which in San Francisco is close to a miracle.
Neighborhood
The Financial District is the city's office core, a canyon of towers between Market Street and the waterfront, built on Gold Rush landfill over what used to be Yerba Buena Cove.
Neighborhood
The Mission is the warmest, sunniest neighborhood in San Francisco, and that is not a marketing line: Twin Peaks and Bernal Hill physically block the fog, so this side of town can run ten to twenty degrees warmer than the Sunset on the same afternoon. It grew up around Mission San Francisco de Asís, founded in 1776 and still standing on 16th Street, and it has been the heart of the city's Latino community for generations.
Neighborhood
SoMa, short for South of Market, is downtown's engine room: the convention center, the ballpark, the big museums, and the headquarters of several companies you have heard of, all on wide blocks that were industrial a century ago and are half construction site now.
Neighborhood
Golden Gate Park is 1,017 acres of what used to be sand dunes, laid out from 1871 and planted into existence by hand.
Neighborhood
The Presidio is not really a neighborhood, it is a 1,500-acre national park inside the city that happens to have houses, restaurants and a bowling alley in it.
Neighborhood
San Francisco's Chinatown is the oldest in North America, established in the 1840s and rebuilt after 1906 in a deliberately ornamental style that was partly a survival strategy: make it a destination and the city cannot push the community out.
Neighborhood
The Richmond runs from the Presidio to Ocean Beach in a flat grid of Edwardians and stucco houses, built after 1906 on what maps used to call the Outside Lands.
Neighborhood
North Beach is the old Italian quarter and the city's literary neighborhood, the place where the Beats read poetry upstairs at City Lights and where you can still buy a salami from a counter that has been selling them since 1896.
Neighborhood
Potrero Hill is a sunny hilltop of small houses and big views, a neighborhood that grew up around shipyards and light industry and was settled by Russian and Slovenian families after 1906, when the hill's bedrock spared it from the worst of the quake.
Neighborhood
Fisherman's Wharf is the most visited and least beloved part of San Francisco, and both facts are fair.
Neighborhood
Mission Bay is San Francisco's newest neighborhood, built on former rail yards south of Mission Creek.
Neighborhood
Russian Hill is steep, quiet and residential, a hill of Edwardian apartment buildings and hidden garden lanes with some of the best free views in the city.
Neighborhood
Glen Park is a small, village-like neighborhood around Diamond and Chenery streets, with Glen Park BART station at its edge.
Neighborhood
Lakeshore wraps around Lake Merced in the southwest corner of the city.
Neighborhood
Nob Hill is the summit the railroad barons built on, and then lost: the 1906 fire took every mansion but one, and the grand hotels and Grace Cathedral went up in their place.
Neighborhood
South Beach is the newest neighborhood on this list: a stretch of the waterfront south of the Bay Bridge that was rail yards and piers until the 1990s, and is now mid-rise apartments, a ballpark and a promenade.
Neighborhood
Noe Valley sits in a bowl behind Twin Peaks, which is why it gets sun when half the city does not, and why it filled up with families.
Neighborhood
Pacific Heights is the grand one: mansions on a ridge between Union and California Streets, built from the 1870s by people who wanted to be above the city and stayed there.
Neighborhood
West of Twin Peaks is a group of quiet residential neighborhoods on the west slope below Twin Peaks, including West Portal, St.
Neighborhood
The Castro centers on Castro Street between Market and 19th streets, with Harvey Milk Plaza at the Castro and Market corner.
Neighborhood
Lone Mountain/USF is the hilltop campus of the University of San Francisco and the blocks around it, just north of the Panhandle.
Neighborhood
Dogpatch is a small, flat, former-industrial neighborhood on the bay side of Potrero Hill, running along Third Street between Mission Bay and the 22nd Street Caltrain station.
Neighborhood
The Western Addition lies west of Van Ness Avenue and takes in the Fillmore, once called the Harlem of the West for its jazz clubs, and Cathedral Hill.
Neighborhood
Bayview-Hunters Point is the city's southeastern corner, along the bay south of Islais Creek.
Neighborhood
San Bruno Avenue is the Portola's commercial corridor, and Muni's 8 and 9 lines stop along it at Silver Ave, Felton St, Bacon St and Paul Ave.
Guides
How the Golden Gate Bridge went from a 1921 sketch to opening day on 28 May 1937: the bond vote, the building dates, the…
Updated Oct 27
Original data
Our own datasets, built from city open data and venues' own pages. Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0.
Original research
1.42
Openings & Closings Index
businesses opened in SF for every one that closed in 2025, up from 1.30. By neighborhood, from the city register.
Tracker
39
Closed & Moved
places are not where the guides say. Every closure checked by address against the city register, dated and sourced.
Original research
52%
Museum & Attraction Transparency Index
of 40 SF museums and attractions publish all five basics a family needs: price, hours, access, directions and child prices.
Calendar
10
Free Museum Days
SF museums and attractions with a regular free day for everyone, plus 8 that are always free. Checked on each venue's own site.
Tool
6
Day-Out Cost Calculator
SF attractions don't publish a price you can see without booking. Build a day out and see what it costs, and what nobody tells you.
Dataset
93%
Every SF Park, Compared
median city maintenance score. From 71% to 100%: every park's score, play areas and dog areas in one table.
Calendar
29
Street Fair Calendar
street fairs, festivals and night markets with a city street-closure permit through December. Confirmed, not rumored.
Tracker
4
SF Gallery Index
galleries closed their spaces in the past year, 4 at Minnesota Street Project. 71 still open, with what is on now.
Seasonal
27
Halloween by the Numbers
blocks with a city permit to close for trick-or-treating on Halloween night. Counted by neighborhood, never listed.
Closed & moved
We check closures against the city business register, by address, and record what is at the address now.
Latest
Around town
How we work
Dates, prices and addresses come from the organizer's, venue's or agency's own page. If it isn't published, we say so.
Guides show when they were last checked, and our calendar is reviewed twice a week.
Listings are free, and no recommendation has been bought. When we get something wrong, we correct it in public.
Send us your event. It's free, and we list what's open to the public.