Downtown / Yaletown / Broadway — walk to most venues. Live hotel and rental prices.
Coming up in Vancouver
Vancouver runs on outdoor events all summer. Concerts, festivals, night markets, beach movies and neighbourhood block parties — here's what's worth planning your week around.
Celebration of Light · PNE · Tonight
Fireworks in Vancouver: where to watch and what’s legal — the year-round guide, including the consumer-fireworks ban.
| When | What | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 1 – 11 | Vancouver International Film Festival Downtown venues | Individual tickets from about $23. Official site |
| Oct 7 – 31 | Fright Nights at Playland Hastings Park | Wednesday to Sunday from 6pm, until 11pm or midnight (Fridays, Saturdays and Thu Oct 22). Advance tickets by night: $39 on Oct 7, 14 and 21, $49 on Oct 8–11, 15–18 and 22, $59 from Oct 23; $6–10 more on the day. Seven haunted houses and the rides are included; our night-by-night guide. Official site |
| Oct 12 | Thanksgiving Monday Across BC | Statutory holiday: banks, Canada Post and government offices close; TransLink charges a 1-Zone fare on every trip. What’s open on the day. Official site |
| Oct 18 – 25 | Vancouver Writers Fest Granville Island | Ticketed events across the island. Official site |
| Oct 22 – Dec 31 | Astra Lumina Stanley Park, 690 Pipeline Rd | Night walk of light installations by Moment Factory, about 45–60 minutes, rain or shine; timed entry every 15 minutes in the evening. Adults from $27.20 for a set date or $39.90 for the flexible any-day ticket; ages 4–12 $29.90 on the flexible ticket; booking fee extra. Tickets, times and tips. Official site |
| Oct 24 – Nov 15 | Diwali Fest Five venues across Metro Vancouver | Free. New Westminster Oct 24, Surrey Arts Centre Nov 1, Coquitlam Nov 5, Roundhouse in Vancouver Nov 7, Surrey City Hall Nov 15. Diwali itself is Sunday, Nov 8: puja time, temples and the Punjabi Market. Official site |
| Nov 11 | Remembrance Day Victory Square and cenotaphs across Metro Vancouver | Statutory holiday; two minutes of silence at 11am. Banks, Canada Post and government offices close; TransLink charges a 1-Zone fare on every trip. Ceremonies, road closures and what’s open. Official site |
| Nov 16 – Dec 24 | Vancouver Christmas Market Jack Poole Plaza, Canada Place | Open daily with timed entry: weekdays from 4pm and weekends from 11:30am until Dec 3, then from 11:30am (10am on Dec 19–23); 6pm close on Dec 24. Tickets from $7.99 before Nov 15, $11.99–$13.99 after; season pass from $30.99; kids 6 and under free. Hours, tickets and tips. Official site |
| Nov 19 – 22 | Eastside Culture Crawl East Vancouver studios | Free to walk in; hundreds of working studios open their doors. Official site |
| Nov 20 – Jan 10 | Canyon Lights Capilano Suspension Bridge Park | 11am–9pm daily, closed Dec 25. Included with park admission. 3735 Capilano Road, North Vancouver. Official site |
| Nov 27 – Dec 29 | Bright Nights at the Noel Holiday Light Festival Cloverdale Fairgrounds, Surrey | 3pm–9:30pm; closed Nov 30, Dec 7, 24 and 25. Kids 6 and under free, parking included. This is the event that used to run in Stanley Park — it is in Surrey now. Official site |
| Nov 29 | Surrey Santa Parade of Lights Cloverdale Town Centre, Surrey | Sunday, 6pm start. Downtown Vancouver’s own Santa Claus Parade has not run since 2019 for lack of a title sponsor. Official site |
| Dec 21 | Winter Solstice Lantern Festival Several neighbourhoods | Falls on a Monday in 2026. Official site |
| Jan 20 – Feb 7 | PuSh International Performing Arts Festival Venues across Metro Vancouver | Contemporary theatre, dance, music and multimedia. The dates are confirmed; the programme and ticket sales have not been announced yet. Official site |
| Feb 6 | Lunar New Year (Year of the Goat) Chinatown and across Metro Vancouver | Lunar New Year’s Day falls on a Saturday. The Chinatown Spring Festival Parade is expected on Sunday, Feb 7 at 11am; the Chinese Benevolent Association usually confirms the date in January. Parade route, events and food. Official site |
| Feb 15 | BC Family Day Across BC | Statutory holiday: banks, Canada Post and government offices close; TransLink charges a 1-Zone fare on every trip. Valentine’s Day falls on the Sunday, so expect a busy long weekend on the local ski hills: season dates and passes. Official site |
| Mar 6 – 13 | Vancouver International Wine Festival Vancouver Convention Centre East and venues across the city | The 48th festival. Trade Days fall on the Thursday and Friday of festival week (Mar 11–12). The 2026 edition poured wines from 112 wineries in 14 countries; proceeds support Bard on the Beach. Official site |
Checked against each organiser’s own site on 15 August 2026; Fright Nights, Canyon Lights, the Christmas Market and Bright Nights re-checked on 27 September 2026; Astra Lumina added from its official page on 28 September 2026 and re-checked on its ticketing page on 2 October 2026; the Surrey Santa Parade of Lights added from the Cloverdale BIA’s own page on 2 October 2026; the January–March 2027 dates added from the organisers’ own pages on 4 October 2026. Where an organiser has not published details for the coming season, this page says so rather than guessing.
· Facts checked against official sources where linked · Editorial policy
The live feed further down this page is everything happening in Metro Vancouver this week, pulled automatically from ticketing sites. This section is the other half: the dozen or so events big enough to plan a trip around, checked by hand against the organiser's own listing.
Cards below are still on or next up. Events that have finished move to Recently Ended further down — not in the first screen. Prices are the organiser's own, not a guess.
Month by month: October · Halloween · November · Christmas lights · this weekend · tonight
🎬 45th edition
🎃 Halloween
👻 Family
🆓 Free
✨ Lights
🆓 6 free
🆓 Free entry
🆓 Free
VIFF runs 1–11 October in downtown cinemas. Fright Nights at Playland runs 19 nights between 7 and 31 October, from $39 in advance; Canyon Frights at Capilano (9 October – 1 November) is the family version and comes with park admission. Thanksgiving Monday is 12 October and Halloween falls on a Saturday. November is when the lights go up: Lights of Hope on St. Paul's Hospital from 12 November, the Vancouver Christmas Market at Jack Poole Plaza from 16 November, the free Eastside Culture Crawl on 19–22 November and Canyon Lights at Capilano from 20 November. Week-by-week detail is in October and November.
Lights of Hope on St. Paul's Hospital, Burrard Street, is lit on 12 November, the last year it runs on that building. Glow Langley opens on 19 November and Canyon Lights at Capilano on 20 November (to 10 January, 11am–9pm, closed Christmas Day). Lights at Lafarge in Coquitlam and Bright Nights at the Noel festival in Cloverdale both start on 27 November. VanDusen Festival of Lights is listed for 27 November – 3 January, but the garden had not published 2026 dates or prices by late September. All twelve displays are in our Christmas lights guide.
No. The Honda Celebration of Light did not run in 2026. English Bay still gets busy on warm evenings, but there is no fireworks competition this year, and anything advertising one is out of date.
The Vancouver Mural Festival wound down after 2024. The closest successor is the Astro Arts Festival in Mount Pleasant, a free three-day block party with more than 30 murals painted live, which ran 7–9 August 2026. The existing murals from previous festivals are still on the walls and free to walk between year-round.
Tickets are on sale now at frightnights.ca. Fright Nights 2026 runs 19 nights, Wednesday to Sunday, from 7 to 31 October: $39 in advance on 7, 14 and 21 October, $49 on the other nights up to 22 October and $59 from 23 October, with $6–10 more on the day. Every night, the hours and the Rapid Pass are in our Fright Nights 2026 guide; pumpkin patches and the rest of the season are in Halloween in Vancouver 2026.
Almost everything on this page is on transit. Hastings Park (Fright Nights) is the 14 or 16 bus from downtown; Granville Island is the 50 bus or the Aquabus from Yaletown; Canada Place and the Christmas Market are a short walk from Waterfront Station; VanDusen is the #17 Oak bus from downtown, about 30–35 minutes; Capilano runs a free shuttle from Canada Place. A day pass costs less than most event parking, and SkyTrain runs to roughly 1:15 AM on Friday and Saturday nights.
![[Free]1-on-1 Oracle Reading & Life Guidance - 30 mins per session](https://cdn-ip.allevents.in/s/rs:fill:500:250/g:sm/sh:100/aHR0cHM6Ly9jZG4tYXouYWxsZXZlbnRzLmluL2V2ZW50czUvYmFubmVycy9mZTQxYzI2YjI0Y2IzMGMzMDRmZjU3YzlmODdhZjg4ODc4NzA5ZDA2YjkzNTI3ODA3M2JhYjg3M2QzYjJkNzc5LXJpbWctdzEyMDAtaDYwMC1kY2Y4ZThiOC1nbWlyLmpwZz92PTE3ODk2NDM3OTI.avif)
📡 Events sourced from Eventbrite Vancouver. Updated automatically. Last refresh: 4 October 2026.
The listings above are rebuilt every morning from public event feeds and venue calendars, so what you see is what is actually on sale or open this week — not a hand-written list that quietly goes stale. Dates and prices come from the organiser; we do not sell tickets.
If you are planning further ahead than a week, the recurring festivals in the sidebar repeat on roughly the same dates every year — that is the calendar locals actually plan their year around. For a month-by-month view, start with the Vancouver summer guide.
FanVancouver is an independent travel guide to Vancouver — not affiliated with any venue, promoter or event organizer. Prices and schedules are verified against official sources. Contact: Contact
Last review: June 17, 2026.
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