Morgan Hill Mushroom Festival

Over the Memorial Day weekend, the Rose Garden of Morgan Hill’s Community and Cultural Center fills with mushrooms. The festival calls this exhibit the Mushroom Experience. It explains how mushrooms are grown and what they are said to do for health, it sells growing kits, and, in the festival’s own words, a visitor may “maybe even enjoy a taste of Mushroom Beer.” In what the 2026 vendor list calls the Mushroom Garden, Taza Coffee and Dirty Cup Pop & Brew poured drinks beside the festival souvenir stand and Merlins Magical Merch. The festival posted from the grounds that Merlin was making “magical Bubbles.”

Mushrooms in soup, stuffed, and deep-fried

At the 2026 festival, held May 23–24 and billed as the 45th annual, the largest mushroom display belonged to Far West Fungi of San Francisco. The Morgan Hill Times placed its booth in “a central position among the vendors.” The vendor list also credits the company with a Live Mushroom Wall. Far West Fungi is a fourth-generation family business run by four brothers. It grows more than a dozen wood-based varieties, among them shiitake, tree oyster, lion’s mane, maitake, reishi, and turkey tail. It has also begun trying cordyceps, which in the wild grows parasitically on insects. “It’s very challenging,” a company spokesperson told the Times. “We grow all of our other mushrooms on the same medium, but cordyceps is something that we keep trying. It keeps our lab fun and exciting.”

The food court fills the parking lot of the Community and Cultural Center near the amphitheater stage. Mushrooms come in soup, stuffed, sandwiched, deep-fried, marinated, and over rice. Around them are tri-tip sandwiches, ribs, pulled pork, brisket, turkey drumsticks, calamari, kabobs, gyros, falafels, Philly cheesesteaks, kettle corn, and Chinese and Mexican food. The 2026 list included Cousins Maine Lobster, the Great Canadian Poutine Company, Foustman’s Salami, and Yakitori Yado. Festival president Dan Keith counted the fungi himself: “There’s mushroom coffee, there’s a lot of mushroom-inspired dishes, there’s mushroom demonstrations, there’s a mushroom garden—a lot of mushrooms here this year.”

Three wine booths pour local wines and sangria. Trailers serve domestic beer near the food and the music, and a microbrew garden stands in the food court. Vendors sell aguas frescas, smoothies, frappés, and homemade sodas. Ticket sites advertised more than 200 vendor booths for 2026. The Times counted about 80 vendors, 40 of them selling food.

Two stages, a stilt walker, and a rock wall

The amphitheater main stage runs all day both days. On Saturday, May 23, 2026, the Ann Sobrato Jazz Ensemble opened at 10 a.m. It was followed by the Fog City Swampers playing classic rock, then Superbad, then a GEMZ Fitness dance performance, and finally Entourage the Band. The Shane Dwight Experience played blues and R&B at 3 p.m. Dwight is a Morgan Hill native now based in Nashville. On Sunday came the Empire West Reno Rock & Roll Band, Soul Kiss, DustFlower Southern Country, and The Houserockers. Mayor Mark Turner served as master of ceremonies.

At the Chef Stage, Emanual Vasquez of Cochis Kitchen cooked on Saturday. So did Albert J. Hernandez, “The Untamed Chef,” who also appeared on Sunday, along with the brothers Sam, Dave, and Dominic Bozzo, billed as “The Three Bozzo’s.” DJ Rich Haun played the Spotlight DJ stage all weekend beside the ponies, the petting zoo, and the rock wall in the Fun Zone. Mardi the Mushroom, other mushroom mascots, strolling musicians, and a giant mushroom stilt walker worked the crowd. The Times also reported a live blacksmithing demonstration among the craft booths.

Sunday at half past one

The Sunday program stops at 1:30 p.m. for the scholarship awards on the amphitheater stage. The festival is run by Morgan Hill Mushroom Mardi Gras, Inc., a nonprofit, and it gives every dollar above its costs to three causes: scholarships for seniors living within the Morgan Hill Unified School District, mini-grants to the district’s elementary and middle schools, and donations to the clubs and school groups that staff the grounds. Those groups receive about $20,000 a year. In 2026 they included Scout Troop 730, which handled janitorial work, and the Sobrato High School football team, which set up and tore down.

On May 24, 2026, Keith, Turner, and Santa Clara County Supervisor Sylvia Arenas gave $37,000 to 35 seniors from Sobrato, Live Oak, and Central high schools. Most awards were $1,000. Four students received an extra $500. Two of them were Presidential Scholarship winners, chosen by Keith, who said, “some of the money for the Presidential Scholarships comes out of my own pocket.” The other two received the Brad Spencer Memorial Scholarship. “This is the reason we do this Mushroom Festival, for these scholarships, for these young adults,” Keith said. “Myself and the board of directors work all year long on this. We’re all volunteers.”

The festival says it began awarding scholarships in 1984 and has since given almost $2 million to more than 1,500 students. The Times, citing organizers, put the total at more than $2 million. Recipient Ithaca Thai, a Sobrato student at her second festival, said: “It’s pretty much the same as last year, I always really like the food.” Keith told the Times that 2026 attendance appeared to be down, and that a ticket price raised $5, to $25, together with stronger sponsorships, made up the difference. “Last year we sold about 13,000 tickets,” he said. “Hopefully this year we at least reach 10,000.”

A fire chief’s fundraiser

Those tickets are recent. The festival began as a rescue for the Morgan Hill Fire Department. According to South Valley Magazine, the department needed money to replace aging equipment, and the fundraisers it held had not raised enough. Wikipedia ties the shortfall to Proposition 13. Chief Brad Spencer took his idea from the Great Dickens Fair in the North Bay. With Ed Lazzarini and Irv Perlitch, owner of Hill Country, he put on the first Mushroom Mardi Gras in October 1980. Wikipedia gives the date as October 18 and the crowd as 30,000. South Valley Magazine reports that the first festival netted $400,000, which was split between new fire equipment and nonprofit groups.

The early festivals were held off Foothill Avenue in southeast Morgan Hill. As the event grew it moved to larger grounds, and according to Wikipedia it has been held downtown since 2005. As the city’s finances improved, the money shifted from fire engines to students. Around its fortieth year, South Valley Magazine described the festival as the second largest in Santa Clara County, drawing about 65,000 people over two days. Admission was free then. “Sponsors also help us keep the festival free admission for all family income levels to enjoy,” said Sunday Minnich, then executive director. Wikipedia records a crowd of 80,000 in 2014.

The COVID-19 pandemic cancelled the 2020 and 2021 festivals. In 2023 the festival was postponed after safety concerns were raised following the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting. It returned in 2024 as the Morgan Hill Mushroom Festival. For the first time it charged admission, $20, to pay costs and fund scholarships. The nonprofit kept the old name, and the Times still called the 2026 event the Mushroom Mardi Gras. The festival’s sponsorship page calls it “Morgan Hill’s last remaining festival.” In the caption to its 2026 coverage, the Times noted that the town was “once known widely as the ‘Mushroom Capital of the World.’”

The 1927 Seagrave

Brad Spencer came from Mountain View and descended from two Santa Clara Valley pioneer families. He moved to Morgan Hill in 1965 to work at Sterling Lumber Company and joined the fire department the same year. He was chief from 1974 to 1994. His son Devin told the Morgan Hill Times about a year in the 1980s when his father bought Commodore 64 computers at Toys R Us to keep the department’s records. Retired Captain Mike Sanders, who started on the day Spencer became chief, remembered upgraded fire hoses and engines painted lime green so they could be seen. “Brad was a mover and a forward thinker,” Sanders said. Retired Captain Jim Xavier, who joined in 1965 alongside him, remembered what Spencer told the crews during the big earthquakes, Loma Prieta in 1989 among them: “Make sure your family is safe first, because you can’t do your job not knowing if your family is safe.”

Spencer liked magic tricks and practical jokes. He mentored at least three “little brothers” through Big Brothers Big Sisters, helped save the Acton House for the Morgan Hill Historical Society, and repaired antiques for the shop he ran with his wife, Rene. He served on the festival board until he died of a sudden heart attack at his west Morgan Hill home on July 2, 2015, at 72. By then, Rene said, the festival had raised nearly $1 million for local students. Devin Spencer now sits on the board.

Starting in 1974, Spencer led the restoration of the city’s 1927 Seagrave fire engine, and he rode it in many consecutive Fourth of July parades. At his funeral at St. Catherine Church on July 17, 2015, firefighters performed the “last alarm” ceremony. Jim Xavier then led the procession of fire engines at the wheel of the Seagrave.