Things to do in October

The Best Upcoming Event in October 2025

The first full month of the Fall, October is a month of changes. From the changing colors on the leaves in the Northeast United States to the gradual cooling of the weather after the summer heat, it is the first hint that we are getting closer to the Holiday Season. The NFL and College Football are in full swing, Major League Baseball is about to crown the top team and festivals & outdoor concerts are just about done for the year. Around the United States, there are some popular annual events like the Chicago Marathon, The Ironman World Championship in Hawaii, Austin City Limits Music Festival, New York Comic-Con and other great events attracting people from all over. And don’t forget National Boss’s Day on October 16, a thoughtful gift can go a long way!

While most of the country is starting to feel a cold chill, The San Francisco Bay Area is celebrating the warmest time of the year. Locals and visitors can take advantage of all the amazing outdoor activities that the Bay Area has to offer. October, in our opinion, is also the best month for events and activities with Fleet Week, The San Francisco Halloween Pub Crawl, haunted houses, pumpkin patches, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Halloween Haunt at Great America all offered during the month. You won’t have a difficult time finding fun things to do in San Francisco in October, but if you want some hints on the best events to choose from, then check out our guide. For detailed information on the best things to do for Halloween in San Francisco, check out the San Francisco Halloween Guide.

Top Events in San Francisco during the month of October

In our opinion, October is hands-down the best month to be in the San Francisco Bay Area. The weather is warm, the sun is shining and the month is filled with lots of fun things to do leading up the Halloween. You can find lots of great harvest events in wine country, amazing concerts, great food events and more, so you won’t have trouble finding things to do. It is the month of Fleet Week, where locals and their friends and family gather along the water or head up to their rooftops to see an an amazing aerial show, complete with some incredibly loud flyovers by the Blue Angels. At the end of the month, you will start to see haunted houses, pumpkin patches, parties, pub crawls and more as people start to get excited for the Halloween holiday. If you are having trouble picking the best events and things to do in San Francisco during the month of October, check out the options below.

Fleet Week

There are a few annual events in San Francisco that you really look forward to all year long and fleet week is definitely on that list. The beautiful October weather in San Francisco provides the perfect scenario for gathering with friends to watch one of the best airshows in the country. The usually unoccupied rooftops all over the city are filled with people watching The Patriots Jet Team, the USAF F-35 Demo Team, The Acemakers T-33, a United 777 and, of course, the highlight of the show, The US Navy Blue Angels. See the pilots expertly fly all over the city, underneath the Golden Gate Bridge and gather into impossibly close formations. Fleet week offers a whole week of fun events including the Parade of Ships, Veterans Art Exhibit, Ship Tours and the Fleet Week Air Show as well as a variety of great live music and Fleet Fest, which offers an interactive look into Fleet Week, a food truck jamboree and more at Pier 30/32.

The 2025 Fleet Week Celebration in San Francisco will take place from October 5 to October 13, with the airshows taking place on October 10. October 11 and October 12.

Event Details

San Francisco Halloween Pub Crawl

There is a lot going on in San Francisco for Halloween from huge nightclub parties to haunted houses and pumpkin patches, however if you really want to celebrate the holiday in the best way, it doesn’t get any better than the Crawloween San Francisco Halloween Pub Crawl. For more than a decade, participants have headed to Polk Street in San Francisco to join the biggest and craziest Halloween event in the city. Over 16,000 people attend this annual event that brings costumed crawlers to over 40 bars in The Marina, Polk Village, Russian Hill, Nob Hill, North Beach, The Mission and more. Attendees enjoy discounted beers, shots & cocktails, DJs, dancing, costume contests and event some sweet party buses to take you to the bars. The party starts at Mayes Oyster House, Rick & Roxy’s and some other great spots , where you can check in for the crawl and grab your event wristbands and pub crawl maps. Costumes are optional, but highly recommended.

The 2025 Halloween Pub Crawl in San Francisco will take place over 4 days. The event dates are:

Friday, October 24: 6PM to 11PM

Saturday, October 25: 2PM to 10PM

Friday, October 31: 6PM to 11PM

Saturday, November 1: 4PM to 10PM

Event Details

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass

San Francisco is an expensive city to visit and an even more expensive city to live in, however to balance it out, the city offers a large number of awesome free events and festivals. Events like the Stern Grove Festival, Comedy Day, The Chinese New Year Parade, San Francisco street fairs, fireworks shows and, of course, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass are offered free of charge to everyone. The 3-Day Festival started in 2001, a project conceptualized by Warren Hellman, a venture capitalist from San Francisco, was originally named “Strictly Bluegrass” as it was going to be only bluegrass musicians that performed. After the addition of artists from all genres, the event was re-named “Hardly Strictly Bluegrass” in 2004. Past performers included Robert Plant, Fantastic Negrito, Cake, Cyndi Lauper, Flogging Molly, Ryan Adams, Gogol Bordello, Father John Misty, M.C. Hammer, Galactic and more. The festival, which takes place every October in Golden Gate Park, draws around 750,000 people over 3 days to see 80+ bands on 6 different stages.

The 2025 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival will take place from October 3 to October 5 in Golden Gate Park. The event will feature The String Cheese Incident, Watchhouse, Amos Lee, Robert Earl Keen, Courtney Barnett, Emmylou Harris, Trampled by Turtles and more.

Event Details

Tricks and Treats

Previously called Halloween Haunt, this event took place at Great America in Santa Clara. However, due lease issue after the sale of the property, the event (now called Tricks and Treats) has been moved to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo. Depending on where you live, this could be a good things or a bad thing as people are an Jose will now have a much longer drive, but people in SF and Marin County will have a shorter and easier drive.

Halloween in the San Francisco Bay Area brings big events, pub crawls, concerts, haunted houses and more, but if you want to try something a little different, Tricks and Treats is a great choice. This Halloween attraction takes place at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, CA,  Open most Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights in October, producers take over the park, adding lots of great scary details. Attendees can enjoy a series of creepy mazes that each have their own theme like CornStalkers, Tooth Fairy, Zombie High and Chaos House. There are also two “scare zones”, which aren’t for the faint of heart. While the production changes every year, in the past there has been a Dia de los Muertos party zone with music and dancing, a wax museum blackout where you are alone in a pitch black wax museum with only a flashlight and a creepy carnival area called “Killer Clown Town”. This haunted theme park is easily one of the best Halloween events for all ages in California and definitely a great way to upgrade your Halloween experience.

Event Details

Castro Street Fair

Another one of San Francisco’s famous street fairs, the Castro Street Fair was actually started by one of San Francisco’s most iconic residents. The concept was created by none other than Harvey Milk, the first elected official that was openly gay in the state of California. In 1974, he created the Castro Street Fair, with hopes to encourage “togetherness and inclusiveness” in the City of San Francisco and beyond. The event takes place along Castro Street and Market Street and brings together a large number of street vendors, artists and more combined with a great selection of culinary delights, live music and beer & wine tasting. Even better, the proceeds from the fair go to a number of charities chosen by the event organizers that are important to the community. The Castro Street Fair takes place every October.

In 2025, the Castro Street Fair will take place on Sunday, October 5 starting at 11AM.

Event Details

Potrero Hill Festival

After over 30 years, the Potrero Hill Festival is still going strong as part of San Francisco’s street fair season. Taking place in the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco along 20th Street between Missouri & Wisconsin Streets, the annual event features great food, live music, local vendors, crafts, art, rides and lots of activities for both adults and children.

The 2025 Portrero Hill Festival will take place on Saturday, October 18 from 10AM to 4PM.

Event Details

October Activities in San Francisco

Visit a Haunted House

If you like to watch scary movies and want to take things up a notch with an in-person horror experience, then you will be able to choose from a lot of great options during the month of October. Haunted houses range from slightly creepy to downright scary, so make sure to find out a little bit more about each attraction. Throughout the country, you can find some absolutely terrifying attractions like the New Orleans Nightmare and Blackout in New York City are so terrifying that you need to sign a waiver before you enter. Whether you are looking for heart-stopping thrills that will give you nightmares all year or just looking for a fun, Halloween-themed attraction, you will find a little bit of everything in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Winchester Mystery House

A bizarre tourist attraction all year long, the Winchester Mystery House is a massive home located in San Jose. Sarah Winchester, wife of William Wirt Winchester who was the heir to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, purchased the house after she moved from the East Coast to the West Coast, a few years after losing her daughter to a childhood illness and shorty after her husband died of tuberculosis. It began as a modest 8 room farmhouse, however Sarah used the fortune she inherited to start a home renovation that would last until the end of her life. When Sarah died in 1922 the home had grown to 24,000 square feet with 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 fireplaces and staircases, 13 bathrooms, kitchens and more. In todays dollars, it is estimated that the obsessive renovation would have cost upwards of $71 Million dollars. Regardless of the motivation for this crazy expansion, what she left behind is probably one of the most unique and mysterious homes in the world. The home was opened to the public in 1923 and since then over 12 million people have toured this unique piece of architecture. While this is a great place to visit any time of the year, Halloween opens up a whole new level of creepiness as they offer a special tour that will take you to secret, hidden rooms, guide you through mind-bending dark passages until you finally end up in the courtyard, where you can have a much needed cocktail to calm your nerves.

More Information

Visit a Pumpkin Patch

Halloween involves a lot of different things from picking the perfect costume to picking the best Halloween event. If you are a big fan of the holiday and love to go all out with some spooky decorations and displays at your home, then you probably get excited to pick the perfect pumpkins to carve into a variety of funny or spooky faces. Rather than just grab any old pumpkin at Safeway, why not make a day of it and head to one of the Bay Area’s awesome Pumpkin Patches? Here are a few of the best Pumpkin Patches in the San Francisco Bay Area:

Piedmont Pumpkin Patch
4414 Piedmont Ave
Oakland, CA 94611

Website

Andreotti Family Farms Pumpkin Patch
800 Cabrillo Hwy
Half Moon Bay, CA 94019

Website

Clancy’s Pumpkin Patch
2101 Sloat Blvd.
San Francisco, CA 94132

Website

Cool Patch Pumpkins
6150 Dixon Ave West
Dixon, CA 95620

Website

Wine Tasting Tours

There probably isn’t really a “bad” time to go to Napa Valley and Sonoma Valley for a winery tour, but October happens to be a great time to go. The summer crowds have died down a bit, the weather is a little cooler and since it is harvest season, you can find a lot of cool events and special tastings. Grab a group of friends, rent a bus for your very own winery tour and take advantage of the close proximity of one of the best wine regions in the world.