This Weekend in Denver · October 22, 2026
Things To Do in Denver This Weekend: October 23-25, 2026
The 49th Denver Film Festival hits its first full weekend at the Sie FilmCenter, the Chatfield Farms corn maze and Four Mile's lantern walk are both running out of calendar, and Boo at the Zoo takes its last three-night weekend of the season, October 23-25, 2026.
1. Denver Film Festival, 49th Edition
Eleven days, more than 140 films, and this is the first full weekend of it. Everytime screens Friday at 6 PM at the Sie FilmCenter on East Colfax, Behemoth! gets the Ellie Caulkins at 1 PM Saturday, and Growth of the Soil runs Sunday at 2:45 PM back at the Sie. Single tickets exist, but past two screenings the pass is the cheaper arithmetic, and Denver Film sells both. The festival runs through November 1, so a slow start is recoverable.
Arts2. Changing Landscapes: Inside Venice, Mesa Verde and Rapa Nui at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science
Venice, Mesa Verde and Rapa Nui, three World Heritage sites, built out in photogrammetry projections you walk into rather than read about, with hands-on stations between them. Friday the museum stays open to 9 PM with the Venice and Rapa Nui projections running, which is the version of this to see. Included with museum admission, $27.95 for adults, in City Park with on-site parking off Colorado Boulevard. It hangs around until January 3, so this is not your last chance, just your best Friday.
3. Bright Nights at Four Mile Historic Park
Lantern displays built at insect scale, walked through after dark on park grounds that are closed to everybody else at that hour. Wednesdays through Sundays to November 8, 7 to 11 PM, at Four Mile Historic Park in Washington Virginia Vale near Cherry Creek. Adults are $28 in advance and $30 at the gate, youth $21 and $23, members $20, and the weekend time slots are the ones that go first. Booking ahead saves two dollars a head and the drive home empty.
Festivals4. pARTy and Rigsby Revisited: The Arvada Center Turns 50
Free, and the free part is not the best thing about it. Nineteen artists fill the Main Gallery for the Arvada Center's 50th, Moe Gram included, while the Upper Gallery rehangs work from the Center's first solo exhibition, mounted in 1977. At 6901 Wadsworth Boulevard in Arvada, up through November 8. Check gallery hours, which are not theater hours.
5. Corn Maze at Chatfield Farms
Seven acres cut into Colorado's columbine and a bighorn sheep, which from ground level you will mostly have to take on faith. Open 9 AM to 5 PM on timed advance tickets at Denver Botanic Gardens Chatfield Farms in Littleton, through November 2. The pumpkin patch is open Saturday and Sunday, $2 to $15 a pumpkin, with Saturday sales ending at 5 PM and Sunday running to 5:30. Buy the time slot before you drive to Littleton, not after.
6. Barefoot in the Park at the Arvada Center
Kate Gleason directs the Neil Simon comedy about a terrible first apartment in the Arvada Center's Black Box, where a small room does that script more favors than a big one. Friday at 7 PM, Saturday twice at 1 and 7, Sunday matinee only at 1 PM, through November 1. From $55 plus fees through the Arvada Center box office.
7. Fall at DZCA at Denver Zoo
The daytime half of the zoo's October, and the half already included with regular admission. Cryptid characters and Animal Ambassadors are out all weekend, pumpkin carving runs Friday through Sunday only, and Saturday has Bigfoot and the Mermaid working in broad daylight. Daily 9 AM to 4 PM through October 31. The Fall Attractions Pass is $14.95, or $9.95 for members, and adds the railroad, the carousel and animal feedings, which pays off only if you are doing all three.
8. Elitch Gardens Fright Fest
Three haunts, Port of the Damned, Redcliff Ridge and CARN-EVIL, all included with general park admission, season passes valid. Hours matter more than usual here: Friday is 6 to 10 PM with Booville, the kids zone, closed; Saturday runs noon to 11 PM; Sunday runs noon to 9 PM with Booville open until 6 PM, before the scares take the park. Elitch Gardens, 2000 Elitch Circle, downtown. If you are bringing both a seven-year-old and a fourteen-year-old, Sunday is the only day that serves them both.
9. Feeding Beatrice at the Aurora Fox Arts Center
The Colorado premiere of Kirsten Greenidge's gothic horror comedy, directed by Betty Hart, which is a better pairing than most Halloween-season programming gets. Curtain is 7:30 PM at the Fox Mainstage on East Colfax in the Aurora Cultural Arts District, running through November 1 with a 2 PM matinee on closing day. Tickets run about $17 to $45 and there is a lot adjacent to the theater. The pay-what-you-can performances were the early previews, so that window has closed.
Weird10. 40 West Gallery Member Showcase (First Friday Opening)
Free, in Lakewood, up through November 1 at The HUB at 40 West Arts, 6501 West Colfax Avenue. The biannual Member Showcase is work by artists in the 40 West Arts District, the nonprofit that keeps that run of Colfax in business. The First Friday opening is long over, so check posted hours for a weekend visit.
11. Boo at the Zoo at Denver Zoo
Nine candy stations and six cryptids on a set schedule, 4:30 to 9 PM Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the last three-night weekend of the run. Saturday the Bog Witch, Bigfoot and the Werewolf hold fixed posts, and Sunday the candy stops hand out allergy friendly tokens. These late-October nights are $27.95 for adults and $20.95 for youth, free under 2, and they are also the ones that sell out, so buy before Friday rather than at the gate. If this weekend reads as too much, October 31 is the sensory-friendly night at the same hours, with lowered sound, no strobing, quiet rooms and sensory kits on request.
Quick answers
- What is happening in Denver this weekend, October 23-25, 2026?
- Friday the Denver Film Festival's first full weekend opens with Everytime at 6 PM at the Sie FilmCenter, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science stays open to 9 PM for Changing Landscapes, and Boo at the Zoo runs 4:30 to 9 PM. Saturday is the crowded day: Behemoth! at the Ellie Caulkins at 1 PM, the Chatfield Farms corn maze and pumpkin patch until 5, Fright Fest from noon to 11 PM, and Barefoot in the Park twice at the Arvada Center. Sunday belongs to matinees, with Growth of the Soil at 2:45 PM, a 1 PM curtain in Arvada, and the last Boo at the Zoo of the weekend.
- What free things are there to do in Denver this weekend?
- Two picks in this edition cost nothing: pARTy and Rigsby Revisited at the Arvada Center, free through November 8, and the 40 West Gallery Member Showcase at The HUB at 40 West Arts in Lakewood, free through November 1. Both are galleries, so check posted hours instead of assuming weekend access. The Denver Wiesn Oktoberfest and six other no-cost picks are in this week's free edition.
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