Oct. 24 Starts a Ten-Day Fall Run on Grand Avenue, From Grand Park to Grand Hope Park

At 11 a.m. on Saturday, October 24, Grand Avenue between Temple Street and 6th Street becomes one continuous free program. Rain doesn't cancel it. Grand Ave Arts: All Access is celebrating its 10th anniversary this month. Time Out counts 14 participating institutions, and the organizer's directory says more than 14, from The Broad and MOCA to the Central Library and Metro Art. At the north end of the same street, Gloria Molina Grand Park opens Downtown Día de los Muertos that morning. Its altars stay up daily through Monday, November 2.

Because both events open on the same day, Grand Park becomes the north end of the arts day, and the arts day becomes the first of Día's ten days. The best way to use the street is to treat October 24 as day one and plan the rest of the run around it.

The route, north to south

All Access runs 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Most of the programming sits along a single line of addresses, so walking downhill from the park works well. Here is the route in walking order, with the times worth planning around.

1. Gloria Molina Grand Park, 200 N Grand Avenue. Día's Opening Day takes over Block 1, from Grand Avenue to Olive Court, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Anaís Azul hosts, with performances by El Río, Mariachi Arcoiris and Grupo Bella. Ohtli Yollotl offers spiritual cleanses, and A Place Called Home shows youth artwork. Families can decorate sugar skulls, weave paper and get faces painted. The park's All Access listing also adds a community braiding circle.
2. The Music Center, Jerry Moss Plaza, 135 N Grand Avenue. Center Theatre Group starts the day with a performance of ¡SÍ SE PUEDE! from 11 to 11:40 a.m. At noon, LA Opera unveils a curtain with artist Enrique Martínez Celaya. Its Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artists give recitals at 11:30 a.m. and 2 p.m., and there's a costume showcase in between. The LA Phil brings an instrument petting zoo and a YOLA ensemble performance to the plaza. The Music Center itself offers tours of Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, plus BEASTS in its Digital Arts Space and a youth band at 1 p.m.
3. REDCAT. Flesh Witness is free to view from noon to 6 p.m., with an exhibition walkthrough from noon to 1 p.m.
4. DATALAND at The Grand LA. Refik Anadol's museum of AI arts opened in June, and this is its first year on the All Access roster. The program includes a preview of its LATENT SPACE salon, a founders' talk at noon and a conversation about AI and museums at 1:30 p.m.
5. Colburn, 200 S Grand Avenue. Colburn has its own instrument petting zoo, student music and dance performances, an open dance class, a theater workshop, and a chance to conduct an orchestra.
6. The Broad, 221 S Grand Avenue. Admission is free all day. The Broad's Celebrate Community program with L.A. TACO brings DJ sets from Bianca Lexis, Passionfruit, Radha and Jasmine Salvino, a pop-up market of local food and small-business vendors, and spray-painting workshops with a demo by graffiti artist SABER.
7. MOCA, 250 S Grand Avenue. MOCA runs a drop-in workshop where kids make monster puppets, plus a family dance party. Classical California sets up a headphone listening lounge there with its Glissando and Arcade streams.
8. Grand Av Arts/Bunker Hill Station, 211 S Hope Street. Metro Art leads station tours at 12:30, 1:30, 2:30 and 3:30 p.m., covering works by Ann Hamilton, Pearl C. Hsiung, Mungo Thomson and Samira Yamin.
9. California Plaza, 350 S Grand Avenue. Grand Performances hosts a vendor village and a Lucha Libre program with music, film, a talk and storytime. Its La Nueva Ola de Cumbia set runs from 4 to 5 p.m., after the official day ends.
10. Los Angeles Central Library, 630 W 5th Street. The library is showing the world's largest pop-up book and running Octavia Lab tours. It also has sugar-skull decorating, a tin-embossing workshop with Miriam Quezada, chalk drawing, and percussion and music-reading activities.

The sugar skulls at both ends of the route, at the library and in Grand Park, tie the two events together. If you're bringing kids, either stop works for that activity, and you can spend the rest of the day on other things.

Several program cards on the organizer's site carry older posting dates, even though their listings show October 24, 2026. Check grandavearts.org the week of the event before you set a schedule around a specific time.

Where to sit down on the hill this year

This year, three new places to eat sit along the route.

La Nena Cantina opened in early August at 141 S Grand Avenue, in front of Walt Disney Concert Hall. It serves handmade tortillas, tableside guacamole, coastal Mexican dishes and cocktails. It's open 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, and The Music Center's listing takes reservations through OpenTable. It sits a few steps from the Jerry Moss Plaza programs, so it's a natural lunch stop between the noon curtain unveiling and the 2 p.m. opera recital.

Plaza Grill is on the east side of the Mark Taper Forum on Jerry Moss Plaza. It serves smashburgers, loaded fries, sweet-potato tots and vegan options. Its listing says it opens 2.5 hours before performances. Its hours follow the performance calendar, so confirm them for October 24 before counting on it.

Massilia opened this spring at The Grand, 100 S Grand Avenue, Suite 04B. It's a Marseille-inspired restaurant with a full bar and craft cocktails. It's in the same complex as DATALAND, so it's an easy stop after the 1:30 p.m. talk.

On October 24 itself, The Broad's vendor pop-up and the vendor village at California Plaza add more food along the southern half of the route.

The nine days after Saturday

The altars are the main reason to come back. The 2026 Downtown Día de los Muertos is curated by Consuelo G. Flores, and its theme is "The Power of One: It Starts with One. One Becomes Many." The organizers count more than 16 altars. Discover Los Angeles's September 29 guide puts the number at 17. This year's program also includes a new mentorship. Eight emerging artists are making shoebox altars for the community altar.

You can see the altars from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day across park Blocks 1 and 2, which run from Grand Avenue to Hill Street. On October 24, they're the backdrop to a festival. On a Tuesday evening, you can see them with far less going on around them.

The October 28 session is the quietest way to see the altars with the curator. It begins with limpias by curanderas from Ohtli Yollotl, then moves into the tour and the paper-flower workshop, all after work hours on a Wednesday.

The Halloween festival on October 31 is at Grand Hope Park, a few blocks south of the All Access route but on the same street. If you're bringing kids to Grand Park the next afternoon for Noche de los Muertos, you can walk Grand Avenue from south to north over that weekend.

Two dates that are easy to get wrong

Dates for this season have shown up in more than one version, so it helps to know which ones hold. The Music Center's September 1 fall release lists "Saturday, October 25" in its calendar. October 25, 2026, is a Sunday, and Grand Park's later September 15 release confirms the opening is Saturday, October 24. The closing event is called Noche de los Muertos, and it's on Sunday, November 1. The altars stay up one more day, through Monday, November 2.

November 1 is also the last night for Rossoblu at 1124 San Julian Street, as Steve and Dina Samson told Eater LA in September. The Samsons have sold the business, and the new owners plan to reimagine the City Market South space, with Steve working alongside them on the next concept. If you've been meaning to book one last dinner there, the Sunday of Noche de los Muertos is its final night of service.

Events like these shape how a block feels, and so do new places like La Nena Cantina and DATALAND. If you own a Downtown loft or condo and want to know how this year's changes on and around Grand Avenue might show up in your home's value, Lauren Morelli can walk you through it. Get a Free Home Valuation, and plan your October 24 route while you wait.