Where are you planning to park on September 19?
If your answer involves circling Water Street until something opens up, or trusting the shuttle to get you from an overflow lot, you're planning for an Apple Days that no longer exists. The Excelsior-Lake Minnetonka Chamber of Commerce, which runs the festival, confirms it plainly on this year's FAQ page: no shuttle is provided in 2026. That single change, combined with two civic projects working their way through city review near the festival grounds, means the muscle memory you've built up from past Apple Days weekends needs an update.
Apple Days has run since 1935, which makes it one of the oldest continuously held community festivals in the Twin Cities metro. This year it lands September 18 through 20, with the festival grounds occupying Water Street from 3rd Street to Lake Street. Friday runs 5 to 10 p.m., Saturday runs 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Sunday wraps up at 4 p.m. Those are the constants. What's changed is everything around them.
The Shuttle That Didn't Come Back
For a town that packs a full weekend of foot traffic into a several-block stretch of Water Street, a shuttle used to be the pressure release valve. It let people park farther out and still make it to the pie contest on time. This year that valve is gone, and the Chamber's guidance leans hard on paid street parking and a short list of named lots to absorb the difference.
Here's what's actually available, according to the Chamber's own event planning:
- The Parking Ramp on One West Drive
- The Excelsior East Lot, tucked behind Excelsior Brewing Company on 3rd Street
- The Mount Calvary Lutheran Church lot, but only on Saturday
- Ample paid street parking throughout downtown
That Mount Calvary detail matters more than it sounds like it should. If your plan was to lean on that lot on Friday evening or Sunday afternoon, it isn't an option this year. Saturday is the only day it's open, which pushes even more pressure onto the ramp and the East Lot on the festival's bookend days.
Excelsior Brewing Company itself sits right at the edge of the action, at 421 3rd Street, essentially marking one corner of the festival footprint. It's been part of downtown since 2012, and this year its rear lot is doing double duty as a named overflow option rather than just a brewery parking lot. If you've never noticed that lot before, you will this September.
Two Projects Are Quietly Changing What You're Walking Past
Here's the part that doesn't show up on any festival flyer. Two separate city processes touch ground you'll be walking across during Apple Days, and both have been documented in city planning records over the past year and a half.
The first is a proposed redevelopment at 10 Water Street, an address that sits inside the festival's own footprint. City planning commission records show the application entered review in 2025, alongside broader commission work on standards for special events downtown, including where food trucks and portable restrooms can be sited. Whatever comes of the application, the address is one you'll walk directly past on your way from the pie tent to the beer garden.
The second is the multi-year restoration of Excelsior Commons, the 13-acre lakefront park that has hosted the town's Fourth of July celebration and Art Fair for generations. A state environmental trust fund proposal describes the next phase the city is seeking funding for: shoreline stabilization at the East Beach, where erosive lake edges would be reinforced with native cordgrass and manna grass plantings, plus removal of hazard trees and invasive buckthorn from the East and West Knolls to let native plant communities take hold. Separately, the city put out a request for proposals, due December 1, 2025, for design services on a new playground with three play zones and ADA-accessible surfacing, built to preserve sightlines to the lake. Neither project sits inside the Apple Days footprint itself, but the Commons has always been the spot residents duck over to for a breather between festival activities, and depending on where each piece stands this fall, parts of the park may look different than they did at last year's Apple Days.
That context reframes what the 11 a.m. Historic Water Street Walking Tour is actually doing. The tour traces Excelsior's development back to its days as a steamboat landing in the 1800s, which means it's a story about a waterfront that has never stopped being rebuilt around lake access and commerce. Walking that route this September, past an active planning application on Water Street itself and past a park in the middle of its own restoration, isn't just nostalgia. It's a live version of the same pattern the tour describes.
The Weekend, Hour by Hour
The headline programming hasn't moved much from past years, but if you're building your weekend around specific moments, here's what to pencil in.
| Day | Hours | What's happening |
|---|---|---|
| Friday, Sept 18 | 5–10 p.m. | Festival opens, vendors and food trucks, Modus Advisors Beer Garden |
| Saturday, Sept 19 | 10 a.m.–10 p.m. | Historic Water Street Walking Tour at 11 a.m., Apple Pie baking and eating contest, Paradise Charter Cruises, Happy Apple Kids Corner, main stage entertainment all day, street dance closing out the evening |
| Sunday, Sept 20 | 10 a.m.–4 p.m. | Vendors, food, and family activities continue at a slower pace |
Saturday is clearly the day the Chamber built around, which is also the day the extra Mount Calvary lot is available. If you're only carving out one block of time this weekend, that's the day worth clearing your schedule for.
A Few Practical Notes Locals Will Actually Use
A handful of smaller logistics are easy to miss until you're standing in the wrong spot looking for them.
First Aid, emergency response, and the lost and found tent are located on 2nd Street, close to the Modus Advisors Beer Tent rather than at the main festival entrance. Portapotties are set up in the empty lot near Dock Cinema, which is worth remembering if you're wrangling kids through the Happy Apple Kids Corner or the Kids Art Tent and need a fast option. Excelsior Brewing Company doesn't serve food on premise, so if you're planning to grab a beer there between festival stops, plan to eat at one of the food vendors or downtown restaurants first.
And if you've got younger kids in tow, the town's 1925 carousel, rescued from the old Excelsior Amusement Park, is still running today as one of the only vintage carousels in Minnesota still in operation. It's a separate stop from the festival grounds, but it pairs naturally with a Saturday spent downtown.
The Takeaway for Anyone Already Living Here
Apple Days hasn't changed its personality. It's still the same unhurried, locally run festival it's been since 1935, with the same beer garden, the same pie contest, the same street dance closing things out. What's different this year is the town underneath it. A shuttle that used to smooth over parking pressure is gone. A development application on Water Street itself is moving through review. A multi-year restoration at the Commons is mid-project. None of these things will show up on a festival poster, but together they mean the routine you've relied on for past Apple Days weekends needs a small update, not a full rewrite.
That's the pattern worth paying attention to if you live here long enough to notice it. Excelsior doesn't sit still, even during the weekend built around tradition. The same corridor that's hosted a September apple festival for ninety years is also, right now, quietly working out what its next chapter on Water Street looks like.
If you're watching these kinds of changes and wondering what they mean for property values, timing, or what's coming next along the lakefront, that's exactly the conversation The Weinstock Group has with clients across Excelsior and the rest of the Lake Minnetonka corridor every week. Schedule a complimentary consultation and we'll walk through what's actually happening in this market, block by block, the same way we just walked through this one.
