Things to Do in Cedarburg This October: Festivals and New Venues

The tents are already going up on the City Hall lawn. Foxtown Brewing's crew was staging kegs there this week, just before anyone taps one, and across Washington Avenue the patio that used to belong to Art of Joy Social House & Mercantile is now Camp Bar's riverfront deck, string lights on and fire pits ready for whatever October decides to do with the weather. The 52nd annual Wine & Harvest Festival wrapped up September 20, and the wine glasses and grape-stomp barrels are packed away for another year.

What's easy to miss is that Cedarburg's fall calendar isn't one festival with an afterglow. It's three distinct weekends, spaced roughly two weeks apart, and this year the stretches between them have actual destinations attached for the first time. Oktoberfest runs October 2 through 4. The Scary Bloody Mary Walk follows on October 17. In between, and around both, two venues that didn't exist a year ago are doing the work of holding downtown together.

Oktoberfest, Expanded

Oktoberfest returns to the City Hall lawn October 2 through 4, opening with the keg tapping Friday from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., moving into a full Saturday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and winding down Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Foxtown Brewing is back as the mainstage sponsor, running the bier garten with live music from Bridge Road, and the Milwaukee Glockenspiel Group performs its show every two hours through the weekend. The Pommersche Tanzdeel and River City Blaskapelle handle the dancing and the traditional brass, the kind of programming that's been part of this festival long enough that Foxtown is described as "returning" rather than debuting.

What's changed is the footprint. The marketplace has expanded beyond the City Hall lawn into the Community Center parking lot, giving vendors more room and giving the festival a second cluster of activity a block away. Cedarburg High School students are running an arts and crafts booth to raise money for their GAPP exchange trip, which means part of what you're buying at the craft tables this year funds a specific group of teenagers' trip abroad, not just a general festival fund. The contest lineup stays true to form: stein holding, best lederhosen or dirndl, a pretzel eating contest, and Oktoberfest trivia, alongside a Sunday appearance from the Milwaukee Porsche Club and a round of Hammerschlaagen for anyone who wants to test their aim with a hammer and a nail.

None of this requires advance planning the way a ticketed event does. Admission has run $5 on Friday, $10 on Saturday, and free on Sunday in recent years, and the whole thing sits on City Hall's front lawn, an easy walk from most of downtown.

Two Weeks Later, A Different Kind of Crowd

The Scary Bloody Mary Walk is set for October 17, ticketed through Cedarburg Friends of Parks & Recreation, the nonprofit that organizes it every year. Twelve sponsor locations are participating in 2026, including C. Wiesler's, and ticket holders choose any five to visit in whatever order they like. A $45 ticket covers five bloody marys and a goodie bag; $35 gets you the same format with non-alcoholic substitutes at each stop. Costumes are optional but there's a prize built into the day for people who bother.

This is a different crowd than Oktoberfest draws, older in feel, more of a downtown-business fundraiser than a beer tent, and it lands on a Saturday that also has the Cedarburg Performing Arts Center kicking off its 2026-2027 Visiting Artist Series. For anyone who'd rather not spend an afternoon bar hopping, that gives October 17 a second, quieter option a few blocks from the walk's starting point at the Community Center.

What Filled the Gap

Here's the part that's actually new this year. The two-week stretches between these anchor weekends used to be the quiet part of Cedarburg's fall, the days when downtown ran on its usual rhythm and nothing in particular was pulling people to Washington Avenue. That's no longer quite true, because two venues opened in 2026 that didn't exist last October.

Camp Bar Cedarburg took over the riverfront property at W63 N664 Washington Avenue this spring, the fifth location for Hackbarth Hospitality Group, known for building Northwoods-themed bars around fire pits and camper memorabilia. The space had been Art of Joy Social House & Mercantile before it closed in December 2025, and the transition from a family-friendly art and mercantile space to a bar built around nostalgia and a wraparound patio changed what that stretch of riverfront is for. It's the kind of place designed for sitting outside as long as the weather allows, which in Wisconsin means people are already treating early October like the last real window before it doesn't.

A few blocks over, Union House brought a modern tapas concept to a stretch of downtown that's mostly known for its historic taverns and supper-club standbys. Managing partner Chris Homayouni described the intent directly:

"Our goal has always been to create a space that feels a little unexpected for Cedarburg."

Shareable plates, a rotating cocktail list, and a wine and beer selection built around variety rather than a single house style. It reads as a deliberate contrast to the Bavarian beer tents and bloody mary crawls that define the festival weekends around it, and that contrast is exactly what gives the in-between weekends a reason to exist. You don't need Oktoberfest or the Walk to have something worth going downtown for anymore.

Washington Avenue itself is still dealing with the construction that's been reshaping traffic and street parking through this stretch of the year, so anyone planning around any of these dates should build in a few extra minutes to find parking, particularly on festival weekends when Community Center lots are already carrying overflow crowds. It's a minor friction next to the calendar itself, but worth knowing before you commit to a specific arrival time.

Reading the Rest of October

Put the dates next to each other and the shape of the month is clear:

• September 19 to 20: Wine & Harvest Festival, 52nd year, now finished
• October 2 to 4: Oktoberfest, City Hall Lawn and the Community Center parking lot
• October 17: Scary Bloody Mary Walk, twelve sponsor locations, ticketed through Cedarburg Friends of Parks & Recreation

Two weeks separate each of these from the next, and for the first time, those two-week windows aren't dead space. Camp Bar's patio and Union House's tapas menu give the in-between Saturdays their own reason to show up, which changes what "Cedarburg in October" actually means for the people who live here. It's not a single festival weekend with three weeks of quiet after it. It's a month where downtown has something going on more often than not, festival or no festival.

If you're already planning your fall around these dates, you know your own calendar better than anyone. But if you're the kind of person who ends up downtown almost by accident on a Tuesday and wants to know what's worth walking toward, October gives you more than the usual two options this year.

Curious what a home in walking distance of all this is actually worth right now? Cierra Burmeister can walk you through it, no festival schedule required.