Maker Faire San Diego 2026 — theNAT at Balboa Park

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Maker Faire San Diego 2026 — theNAT at Balboa Park

Name: Maker Faire San Diego 2026 — theNAT at Balboa Park
Start: 2026-10-01T10:00:00-07:00
End: 2026-10-01T18:00:00-07:00
Location: San Diego Natural History Museum, 1788 El Prado, San Diego, CA 92101

Going? You can check in after it ends.

Thursday, October 1, 2026

10:00 AM PDT – 6:00 PM PDT

San Diego Natural History Museum, 1788 El Prado, San Diego, CA 92101

Part of Balboa Park →

Repeats daily · until Oct 2, 2026

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Tickets & More Info

Idyllwild Renaissance Faire

Sep 12

Carlsbad Village Street Faire 2026

Nov 1

Fall Back Festival — Gaslamp Quarter Historical Street Faire 2026

Nov 8

Gem Faire

Dec 4

About

Somebody built a robot out of a toaster. Somebody else 3D-printed an instrument that actually sounds good. And the ten-year-old at the next table is soldering better than half the adults in the room.

Maker Faire San Diego returns to the San Diego Natural History Museum (theNAT) in Balboa Park on October 1-2, 2026. Hands-on activities, interactive displays, and the kind of learning opportunities that make you realize formal education missed a few things. Explore life sciences with arthropods, construct modular robots, make puppets from modeling plastic, and build 3D-printed instruments that play real music. Participating institutions span the park: Japanese Friendship Garden, Museum of Photographic Arts, Fleet Science Center, Air & Space Museum, Automotive Museum, and more.

Open 10 AM to 6 PM both days at theNAT, 1788 El Prado, Balboa Park, San Diego.

Bring the kid who takes things apart. Bring the adult who never stopped. This is where curiosity goes to be rewarded.

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Coming Soon

48 days away

Idyllwild Renaissance Faire

Sep 12, 2026 $15+ Hurkey Creek Park, 56375 CA-74, Mo…

Two hours up a winding mountain road, in a pine-forested park a mile above the desert, a whole village of people in doublets and corsets gathers each fall to pretend it is 16th-century Spain, and it is absolutely delightful. The Idyllwild Renaissance Faire is the charming, homemade, mountain-air antidote to the giant corporate faires: jousting knights, wandering minstrels, artisans hammering real steel, turkey legs the size of your forearm, and a crowd of gleeful anachronists who take their make-believe joyfully seriously. Saturday and Sunday, September 12 and 13, 2026, at Hurkey Creek Park near Idyllwild. Come in costume or come in shorts, drink from a horn, heckle the joust, and let the cool pines and earnest weirdness win you over. Bring the friend who secretly wants to be a bard. Huzzah, up in the clouds.

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Carlsbad Village Street Faire 2026

Nov 1, 2026 Grand Avenue, Carlsbad Village, Ca…

Twice a year, the streets of Carlsbad Village shut to cars and open to what's often called the largest single-day street fair in the nation — and the November edition is the one locals use to ease into the holidays. Hundreds of vendors line Grand Avenue and the surrounding blocks: handmade goods, art, jewelry, plants, street food from every direction, a beer-and-wine garden, and live music drifting between the booths. It's a walk-all-day kind of event, equal parts shopping, eating, and people-watching, set two blocks from the beach with the ocean breeze running through it. Strollers, dogs, and grandparents all fit; it's as easygoing as a SoCal Sunday gets. Come early to park — the village fills fast — and plan to wander. The Carlsbad Village Street Faire returns Sunday, November 1, 2026, from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM, in downtown Carlsbad Village. Free admission; bring cash and a tote bag.

Fall Back Festival — Gaslamp Quarter Historical Street Faire 2026

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Fall Back Festival — Gaslamp Quarter Historical Street Faire 2026

Nov 8, 2026 Davis-Horton House, 410 Island Ave…

It is not a Renaissance fair. It is not a reenactment. It is San Diego remembering that before the Gaslamp had rooftop bars and convention hotels, it was a frontier town where everything was possible and most of it was inadvisable — and that the best way to teach history to a kid is to let them throw a bean bag at a tin can while someone in period costume explains how the Davis-Horton House survived both a fire and a real estate collapse. The 26th Annual Fall Back Children's Historical Street Faire returns to the Gaslamp Quarter on Sunday, November 8, 2026, presented by the Gaslamp Quarter Historical Foundation. The festival fills the block around the Davis-Horton House with contests, cultural dance troupes, live music, food vendors, and engaging historical activities — all built around the idea that kids learn better when nobody calls it learning. Thousands of San Diego families come to this one. It is one of those events that becomes a fixed point in the annual calendar — the kind of day where a nine-year-old tries their hand at Gold Rush panning and a fourteen-year-old pretends not to enjoy the Civil War-era music until they do. Free admission. Located at the corner of Island Avenue and Fourth Avenue in the Gaslamp Quarter. All ages welcome.

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Gem Faire

Dec 4, 2026 $7+ OC Fair & Event Center, 88 Fair Dr…

Beneath the fluorescent lights of a fairground expo hall lies a secret world of the beautiful and the bizarre: raw amethyst geodes the size of a toddler, slabs of fossilized dinosaur bone, actual meteorites you can hold, shimmering crystals, and tables of metaphysical vendors ready to tell you which stone fixes your love life. Gem Faire draws a wonderfully mixed crowd, serious rockhounds and geologists elbow to elbow with witchy crystal collectors and jewelry makers, all hunting treasure. Friday through Sunday, December 4 to 6, 2026, at the OC Fair & Event Center in Costa Mesa. Come to marvel, to shop, or just to hold a piece of outer space in your palm. Bring the friend with the crystal collection and the one who thinks it's all nonsense. It's part science, part sorcery, entirely fascinating.

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Maker Faire San Diego 2026 — theNAT at Balboa Park

Idyllwild Renaissance Faire

Carlsbad Village Street Faire 2026

Fall Back Festival — Gaslamp Quarter Historical Street Faire 2026

Gem Faire

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