Ask a longtime Uptown resident what happened to the art fair and most will tell you it moved. That's true, and also not the whole story. The event that used to shut down Hennepin and Lake every August didn't come back to the lake. What's opening on the shoreline this October is a different fair entirely, run by a different company, built around a different season.
For anyone circling Bde Maka Ska this fall, that distinction matters more than it sounds. It changes when the neighborhood's biggest outdoor weekend happens, where it happens, and what else is worth doing while you're there.
What Actually Left
The Uptown Art Fair ran for more than 60 years as the neighborhood's signature outdoor event, drawing crowds to the commercial stretch of Hennepin and Lake. Construction disruption eventually forced a relocation, and in the process the event was rebranded as the SoMi Art Fair, settling in at Bachman's on Lyndale. That's a real venue with a real garden center, and it's not inside Uptown. The fair that used to be a walk from your front door became a drive.
That left an actual gap in the neighborhood's calendar. Not a smaller version of the old event. No event at all, for a stretch of time, on the streets that used to host it.
What Filled It Instead
The City of Lakes Art Fair isn't a revival of what left. It's a new event from Homespun Events, the company behind the Edina Art Fair and the Minnehaha Falls Art Fair, and it debuted in fall 2025 in a location the old fair never used: directly on the shore of Bde Maka Ska, along the parkway between West Lake Street and West 32nd Street. This October marks its second run, Saturday and Sunday, October 10 and 11, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with more than 150 artists, live music, and food vendors set up along the water.
The rebuilt Bde Maka Ska pavilion sits right at the edge of that footprint. Its food counter, Pimento on the Lake, has been serving lakeside since the pavilion reopened in October 2023, and it'll be feeding fairgoers alongside the outside vendors this year. That's one new piece of neighborhood infrastructure hosting another.
None of this required Uptown to get its old fair back. It required someone to notice that the lake itself was open real estate for a fall event, and to build one there.
A Fair Built for a Different Season
The old fair ran in August, which meant heat, humidity, and whatever the Minnesota summer decided to do that particular weekend. The new one runs in October, which puts it inside the window when the trail around the lake actually looks like the postcard version of itself. Peak color along the Bde Maka Ska corridor typically lands in the second and third weeks of October, which means this year's fair weekend sits right at the front edge of it.
That timing also puts it on the same calendar page as Lakewood Cemetery's fall programming a few blocks north on Hennepin Avenue. The 250-acre grounds function as an accredited arboretum with thousands of mature trees, and the cemetery holds guided walking tours and outdoor programming each October that make use of exactly that. A fairgoer who wants a second stop that weekend doesn't have to go far to find one.
The net effect is that the neighborhood's marquee outdoor weekend moved from a summer street festival to an autumn lakeside one. That's not a smaller change than it sounds. It swaps pavement for shoreline and swaps the hottest weekend of the year for one of the more forgiving ones.
Where the Water Hands Off to the Leaves
There's a second-order shift happening underneath the fair, which is the lake's own calendar winding down at the same time the fair opens. Wheel Fun Rentals keeps kayaks and paddleboards running on the north shore into fall, and a September paddle on Bde Maka Ska is a different experience than a July one: the water's still warm, the crowds have thinned, and the whole lake feels slower. That window closes before most people expect it to.
Once the boats thin out, the fishing pier at West 36th Street, inside Bde Maka Ska Park, becomes the better bet for a quiet morning. No equipment required, just a calmer lake, fewer boats, and long shadows by mid-afternoon. It's the kind of spot that rewards showing up in October rather than August, when the pier is competing with everyone else's beach day.
Put together, the fair now marks a real hinge point on the lake's yearly rhythm. It's less "one weekend among many" and more the event that sits right where paddling season hands off to walking season.
Getting There Without Losing the Morning
Parking around the lake gets tight on fair weekend, which isn't a surprise for an event that draws artists and visitors to a single stretch of shoreline. The easier approach is by bike, coming in off Excelsior Boulevard, which avoids the congestion right around the fair footprint. For anyone extending the day into a longer ride, the lake connects directly to the Kenilworth Trail and the Midtown Greenway, both of which link out to Lake of the Isles and Lake Harriet if the plan is to make a loop of it rather than a single stop.
None of that logistics advice existed for the old fair, because the old fair wasn't built around a lake trail system. It's specific to this event, in this location, at this time of year.
The neighborhood didn't get its old art fair back this year, and it isn't going to. What it got instead is a new one, on ground the old fair never touched, timed to a season the old fair never used. That's worth knowing before you show up expecting Hennepin and Lake in October and find the lake instead.
If the shift in how this stretch of the lake spends its autumn weekends has you thinking differently about the neighborhood itself, Shane Spencer knows this shoreline block by block. Let's Connect — Request a Confidential Consultation.
