Fall things to do in Des Moines: your 2026 guide

Des Moines fall is quietly the best season here. The heat breaks, the trees turn, and the calendar fills with festivals, orchards, and the kind of crisp weekend that makes you want to be outside all day. Once the Iowa State Fair packs up in late August, here is what's worth doing.

Festivals to plan a weekend around

• Oktoberfest at The District at Prairie Trail in Ankeny, September 25 and 26. Fifty-plus beers, live polka, and the German-festival energy the metro does surprisingly well. Bring a group and a designated driver.
• The Iowa Latino Heritage Festival, late September, with food, music, and art celebrating Latin America. One of the best food-wandering days on the fall calendar.
• The Fall Renaissance Faire at Sleepy Hollow, for a weekend of jousting, artisan markets, and turkey legs the size of your forearm.
• The Scarecrow Festival at Center Grove, an easy family day with wagon rides and giant corn pits for the kids.
• And the Beaverdale Fall Festival brings a proper street-fair weekend to the northwest side in September, if you want something walkable and neighborhood-scale.

Pumpkins, apples, and cider

This is the part of fall Des Moines does as well as anywhere:

• Center Grove Orchard in Cambridge for pick-your-own apples and pumpkins, plus a food area and enough activities to burn an afternoon.
• Howell's Pumpkin Patch in Cumming, home of the pumpkin cannon, which is exactly as fun as it sounds.
• Rose Farmstead for pumpkin painting and fresh apple cider.
• If you time it right, Honeycrisp Weekend in Cumming kicks off apple season from late August into early September.

Go on a weekday morning if you can. The weekends are a scene, which is either the appeal or the problem depending on your tolerance for hayrack-ride lines.

Haunted, for the brave

• Sleepy Hollow Haunted Scream Park runs six themed attractions through October, and it is the serious one, not the corn-maze-with-a-clown kind.
• And a note for transplants: Iowa's Beggars' Night is not regular trick-or-treating. Kids tell a joke before they get their candy. It usually lands the night before Halloween, so have a pun ready.

Leaf-peeping and slow days outside

When the color peaks (usually mid-October), the move is a walk somewhere with trees and water:

• Water Works Park and Gray's Lake for an easy in-town loop.
• Jester Park and Easter Lake Park for a longer, prettier drive-and-walk.
• The Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden and the Iowa Arboretum if you want the color a little more curated.

The last of the good stuff

The Downtown Farmers' Market runs Saturdays through October, and fall is arguably its best stretch: squash, apples, cider, and the final tomatoes before the season closes. And when the morning has a bite to it, the cozy-drink season is on. Horizon Line Coffee and Mars Cafe both do the spiced-and-seasonal thing well.

That's the season in a nutshell. Pick a weekend, pick a category, and let the weather do the rest.

If you want the short list of what's actually worth your time in Des Moines every week, all year, that's exactly what we send. One email, no noise.