Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival

The largest pumpkin in Half Moon Bay on festival weekend stands at the corner of Main and Miramontes Streets. It is the Grand Champion of the Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off, held the Monday before. Visitors may touch it and pose beside it for a 4-by-6 print at $20. The proceeds go to the Cabrillo Education Foundation, which serves students in the seven Coastside public schools. The second-, third- and fourth-place pumpkins have their own display at 775 Main Street.

The festival occupies historic Main Street between Mill and Spruce Streets, 25 miles south of San Francisco and 45 miles north of Santa Cruz on Highway 1. The 54th festival is set for October 17 and 18, 2026. Admission is free, and pets are not allowed. Highway 92, the direct road over from the bay, is congested by 8 a.m. both days, according to the festival. Organizers point drivers from the south to Highway 84 through Woodside and La Honda, past groves of giant redwoods, then north on Highway 1 into town. The country on the way in is seaside farmland: orange fields, scarecrows, barns and pick-your-own patches. The festival counts more than 3,000 tons of pumpkins in the patches around town.

Booths, stages and a carver in overalls

Artists’ booths run for several city blocks. The festival’s art page counts 275 juried artists and craftmakers, and its other pages say 250. They work in glass, ceramics, metal, fiber, leather, wood, jewelry and paint, and their stock runs from hand-blown glass pumpkins to windchimes, wallets and hats. Dana Hale-Mounier, director of Pacific Fine Arts, which manages the artists, puts it this way: “Every item you’ll see is handcrafted from beginning to end — it’s the perfect opportunity to meet the artists that conceive and do the work.” On Sunday only, the Made on the Coast block fills Main Street between Mill Street and Kelly Avenue. Its exhibitors must live on the Coastside, between Montara and Pescadero and between the Pacific and Skyline Boulevard. The block reaches its 12th year in 2026.

Music comes from three named stages: the I.D.E.S. Grounds Main Stage, the Ritz-Carlton South Stage at Fernandez Park, and Cunha’s Country Stage at Mac Dutra Park. The festival also lists a community stage and street performers at various corners. Jim Stevens & Friends open the Main Stage at 9 a.m. both mornings. The 2026 bill also includes Barn Owls, Petty Rocks, Sounds of Skynard, F.A.T. Betty, Casa Del Sol, Pete Floyd and Southbound 101. On Saturday, Cunha’s stage goes dark from noon to 1:30 for the parade, then hands over to the Half Moon Bay High School Marching Band.

Farmer Mike works on an elevated stage in orange overalls and a straw hat. The festival calls him “the Picasso of Pumpkin Carvers,” and 2026 marks his 40th year as its official carver. His pumpkins are of the Atlantic Giant variety and weigh from 300 to more than 1,500 pounds. He does most of the detail work with a folding buck knife and a set of simple chisels, and he answers questions and gives carving tips while he cuts. Past subjects include Yoda, a Wells Fargo stagecoach, Puff the Magic Dragon and the Pigeon Point Light House.

A larger pumpkin, which never rots, stands at Cameron’s Pub. Artist Peter Hazel built it after the festival caught his imagination. The mosaic sculpture is 11 feet high and 12 feet long and weighs 10,000 pounds, made of steel, cement and ceramic tile. It is on permanent display. Through the crowd moves Gourdy, the festival mascot, in a custom costume by Carol Flemming. “Everyone loves Gourdy,” said festival chairman Cameron Palmer.

Parade day and pie

The day starts at 7 a.m. in the City Hall lot at Main and Kelly. There, the Half Moon Bay High School boys basketball teams serve unlimited buttermilk or pumpkin pancakes with three grilled sausage links, and the proceeds go to their program. At 10 a.m. Saturday, the costume contest gathers ghosts, goblins and groups of all ages in front of the Half Moon Bay Library at Church and Correas Streets. The entrants then walk in the parade.

The Great Pumpkin Parade steps off at noon with pumpkin-themed floats, local dance troupes, marching bands and the champion pumpkin. The 2026 grand marshal is Sergio Romo, who pitched for San Francisco Giants teams that won the World Series in 2010, 2012 and 2014.

At 2 p.m. both days, in the Bank of America lot at 620 Main Street, children 11 and under sit down to the pie-eating contest. Contestants 12 and over follow at 2:15. Each faces an 8-inch Safeway pumpkin pie heaped with whipped cream, and the audience judges style as well as speed. Mark Heath has run the contest for many years. “Seeing kids with face and hair full of gooey pumpkin pie, whipped cream and a big smile, it’s a truly sight to behold,” he said.

Sunday opens with the 48th Pumpkin Run, a benefit for Senior Coastsiders. Its kids’ run, 5K, 10K and half marathon start at Hatch Elementary School and follow the Coastal Trail above the Pacific. The festival’s own pages differ on pumpkin carving for visitors. One describes $10 carving all weekend, with a pumpkin and tool supplied. The schedule lists free, unjudged carving on Sunday from 10 a.m. in the Bank of America lot.

Linguiça, Brussels sprouts and a festival rosé

Local nonprofits run the food booths. “We don’t allow commercial vendors in so you can come down, help our nonprofits and get some yummy food,” Palmer told ABC7 in 2022. The pumpkin list is long: pumpkin cake rolls, pumpkin ravioli, pumpkin churros, nachos with pumpkin salsa, pumpkin-spiced cotton candy. Alongside come Portuguese linguiça, tamales, clam chowder in sourdough bowls, and artichoke hearts steamed in garlic and olive oil. Brussels sprouts arrive in marinara. Half Moon Bay is often called the pumpkin capital of the world, but one account notes that Brussels sprouts far outpace pumpkins in value as a crop.

Half Moon Bay Winery pours the 2026 festival-label wine, a 2025 Monterey Rosé of Grenache, along with its Fisherman’s Red. The winery also hosts the Harvest Moon Lounge at Kelly and Main, a place to sit near the music. Half Moon Bay Brewing Company pours brewmaster James Costa’s Pumpkin Harvest Ale, which stays on tap at the brewery through the end of November. Drinks come in a wine glass or beer mug printed with the festival logo.

A paint-in on Main Street

Coastside News tells the story this way. In the early 1970s, Main Street looked worn. Westinghouse, then operating the Half Moon Bay Golf Links, called on two lifelong residents, Dolores Mullin and Patsy Dutra. Scaffolding went up and streets closed, and neighbors took up brushes in what became known as the Great Half Moon Bay Paint-In. Merchants donated paint, and Cunha’s Country Store kept the volunteers in sandwiches and sodas. Mullin and Dutra then joined Edie Phillips, Bev Ashcraft, Lorraine Valadeo and Theresa Gilcrest to form the Half Moon Bay Beautification Committee.

Another account takes its version from the October 19, 1978, Half Moon Bay Review. In that telling, El Granada’s postmaster, Clayton Fountain, recommended a festival to the chamber of commerce. The idea passed quickly to the Main Street Committee for Beautification, and volunteers put it on. Palmer gave his own version in 2022: “Back in 1970, they wanted to rejuvenate our town because we were just kind of a small hick town back then. … they looked around and in October all the fields are orange. They said let’s make it a pumpkin festival.”

The orange fields went back to the 1930s. Brothers John and Clarence Arata, teenagers by one account, planted pumpkins to feed the family hogs south of town. When passing motorists started buying them, for a quarter apiece by the Coastside News telling, the Coastside pumpkin trade began.

The first festival, the Spanishtown Art and Pumpkin Festival, came in 1971. About a dozen artists showed their work, and the committee sold hot dogs, linguiça sandwiches and beer at the I.D.E.S. grounds. Buildings were painted and trees planted, and the proceeds bought benches and wooden garbage cans for downtown. One account puts first-year attendance at about 15,000, with a single nonprofit serving food. Another says no official count was kept, and gives 5,000 for 1972, 30,000 for 1973 and 50,000 for 1974. By 1973 the event had its present name. In 1975 the Review reported crowds topping 60,000. That year 47 children were “temporarily lost,” but there were, the paper noted, “no unhappy incidents.”

Beverly Ashcraft was the parade’s honorary grand marshal in 2022, when the 50th festival returned after a two-year pandemic pause. “We started with like 12 booths,” she said. “We have like 200 now.” For that year, Palmer expected more than 100,000 visitors. Coastside News now puts the yearly crowd at more than 200,000. The committee has spent the proceeds, several million dollars by its count, on flowers and benches for Main Street, scholarships, the fire department and seed money to restart the town’s theater. Fred Mortensen, a former city manager, credited the festival with doing more for Half Moon Bay than anything else in the city’s history.

One pound over Circleville

In 1974, Half Moon Bay’s claim to be the Pumpkin Capital of the World ran into the same claim from Circleville, Ohio. One account says Circleville’s mayor, Frank Barnhill, visited Half Moon Bay and saw its pumpkin growing for himself. The two towns agreed to settle the matter by weight, each at its own city hall, with county agricultural inspectors watching the scales. Coastside News names Half Moon Bay’s mayor that year as Melvin Mello. The other account gives him as Al Adreveno.

Farmer John Minaidis brought in 132 pounds, one pound more than Circleville’s entry. He won again in 1975 and 1976, with pumpkins of 273 and 208 pounds. Growers such as Bob Marsh and Mel Mello became regulars, hauling their entries into town on flatbeds and farm trucks.

The winning weights kept climbing. The champion passed 1,000 pounds in 2001 and 2,000 pounds in 2017. In 2022 a Minnesota grower set a North American record with 2,560 pounds. In 2023 Travis Gienger won with 2,749 pounds. Safeway has sponsored the contest since 1990.

The 53rd weigh-off is set for 7 a.m. Monday, October 12, 2026, on the IDES Grounds at 735 Main Street, and it will be livestreamed. First place pays $9 a pound, and a world record adds $30,000. A separate $1,000 prize for the most beautiful pumpkin is decided by the crowd’s applause. The champion grower also receives a gold ring, the Mel Mello Sr. Grand Champion Growers Jacket, two nights at the Ritz-Carlton, and a place for the pumpkin in the Saturday parade down Main Street.