Free Fallin’: 150+ FREE Boston Events to Make Your Autumn Awesome

By: Jim Martinho - Thursday, Sep 17, 2015 - 4:30pm

Photo by Robbie Shade

You’ve been wiping the sweat off your brow and dreaming of fall weather for most of the last month, and now it’s finally here. So throw on a cozy sweater and feel the leaves crunch under your feet on your way to one of Boston’s many street fairs, artists’ open studios, university lectures, the first-ever HUBWeek festival, and so much more. Oh, and all of these events are FREE to attend, because those pumpkin spice lattes aren’t going to pay for themselves, and no, the guy whose weird name is written on your cup instead of yours isn’t going to pitch in, either.

(A couple notes: This is a Boston list, so we didn’t include any fairs in Vermont or Maine or the weird part of Western Mass. where you’re not even sure if they root for the Red Sox or Yankees. And stay tuned for updates to the list as details come out for even more events later in the season.)

Streets Fairs + Cultural Festivals

9.17 Bay Village Block Party
9.18 Cambridge PARK(ing) Day 2015
9.18 to 9.20 Greek Fest 2015
9.18 to 9.20 South End Greek Festival
9.19 Everett Village Fest
9.19 South Boston Street Festival
9.19 Latin Quarter Arts Festival
9.19 to 9.20 Quincy ArtsFest
9.20 Strike Up the Band @ SomerStreets
9.26 10th Annual What the Fluff? Festival
9.26 MassCan/NORML Boston Freedom Rally
9.26 VivaLatino Cambridge Festival
9.26 Chinatown Lantern Festival
9.26 Chinatown Oak Street Fair
10.3 Medford Harvest Your Energy Festival
10.3 Suffolk Downs Racing and Food Truck Festival
10.4 Haiti and Brazil Hit the ‘Ville
10.4 Allston Village Street Fair
10.4 Roslindale Day Parade
10.11 Harvard Square Oktoberfest
10.11 East Somerville This Is East Festival
10.18 Monster Mashed Up @ SomerStreets
10.25 Somerville Fixer Fair

Concerts + Music Festivals

9.17 Panic! at the Disco at City Hall Plaza
9.17 Berklee Concerts on the Common (weekdays through 10.2)
9.17 Berklee Concerts at the Lawn on D (Thursdays through 10.9)
9.18 Sidewalk Driver at the Lawn on D
9.18 Pop-Up Music at Cambridge Innovation Center
9.18 Johnny D’s We Dig Free Fridays
9.19 MIXFest 2015: Rob Thomas, Third Eye Blind
9.19 Jackson Homestead Jazz in the Yard
9.20 Boston Symphony Orchestra Fall Parks Concert Series (Sundays through 10.11)
9.20 Revels RiverSing
9.20 Charlestown City Square Concert Series
9.23 Converse Rubber Tracks Live: Deer Tick, These Wild Plains
9.24 Sound of Our Town 2 Music Festival
9.25 to 9.27 Longy School of Music Septemberfest
9.25 MMMMaven Free DJ Workshop
9.26 Berklee Beantown Jazz Festival
9.26 Kids Really Rock at the Lawn on D
9.26 East Meets West Block Party
9.26 Bloc 11 Courtyard Music Series
10.4 RadioBDC +1 Series: Circa Waves
10.8 to 10.9 Converse Rubber Tracks Sample Creation Days
10.9 to 10.11 HONK! Festival of Activist Street Bands

Visual + Performing Arts

9.16 to 9.20 Let’s Dance Boston
9.17 Raqs Media Collective Opening Reception at SMFA
9.18 to 1.1 Trouble with Jellyfish at Le Laboratoire
9.19 to 9.20 Jamaica Plain Open Studios
9.19 to 9.20 South End Open Studios
9.19 to 9.20 Faneuil Hall Street Performer Festival
9.20 Boston Theatre Block Party
9.20 Somerville Toy Camera Workshop
9.24 Dewey Square Mural Opening Reception
9.25 to 10.4 ArtWeek Boston (mostly free)
9.26 Smithsonian Museum Day Live!
9.26 LEGOLAND Brick Factor Building Competition
9.27 The Ever-Morphing Clay Sculpture at Mudflat Studios
10.1 to 10.4 Roxbury Open Studios
10.1 Big Art, Tiny House First Thursday Opening
10.2 Shift Relic Opening Reception at Lens Gallery
10.3 555 Gallery: Wild Things at Night
10.4 ILLUMINUS Festival
10.7 Harvard Art Museums: Your Brain On Art
10.12 The Fenway Alliance Opening Our Doors 2015
10.12 Fall Open House at the MFA
10.16 to 10.18 Fort Point Open Studios
10.17 + 10.18 Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo
10.24 MassArt Family Day
10.24 to 10.25 Dorchester Open Studios
11.7 to 11.8 Roslindale Open Studios
11.8 Trash Bash Somerville Recycled Art Show
11.21 to 11.22 Brickbottom Open Studios

Film

9.18 Classics on the Common: The Goonies
9.19 + 9.20 North Allston Outdoor Film Festival
9.21 mGm Xperimental Film Festival
9.21 BASEMENT Media Festival
9.24 to 9.26 MIT European Short Film Festival
9.25 Classics on the Common: Back to the Future
10.8 GlobeDocs Film Festival: Stink!
10.15 2015 Kickstarter Film Festival

Books + Author Events

9.24 Graphic Novel Speaker Series: Karl Stephens
9.28 Spellbinding Stories: Local Authors at First Parish Church
10.4 Boston Teen Author Festival
10.10 to 10.11 Boston Zine Fest
10.23 to 10.24 Boston Book Festival

Colleges + Universities

9.19 MIT Ig Nobel Prize Lectures
9.21 Harvard Science and Cooking: Joanne Chang
9.21 BU Food & Wine: Anatomy of a Cookbook
9.24 Maya Lin at Boston University
9.28 MassArt Fall Galleries Opening Reception
9.30 Kultar’s Mime at Northeastern
9.30 BU Food & Wine: Hummus Wars
9.30 MIT Museum Soapbox Discussion: Remaking Life
10.7 IDEAS Fall Generator Dinner at MIT
10.8 Tim Miller: Sex/Body/Self at Northeastern
10.9 Beantown Throwdown at District Hall
10.9 to 10.10 Black in Design Conference
10.15 MIT/New England Aquarium Carlson Lecture
10.16 Planets: Pluto and Beyond at MIT Museum
10.21 Ta-Nehisi Coates at Boston College
10.27 Harvard Science and Cooking: Jose Andres
11.2 Calvin Klein at Harvard Graduate School of Design
11.12 Brandeis Soli Sorabjee South Asian Lecture Series
11.13 to 11.15 MIT List Visual Arts Center Max Wasserman Forum
11.23 Harvard Science and Cooking: Nathan Myhrvold
11.27 MIT Friday After Thanksgiving Chain Reaction
12.7 Harvard Science and Cooking: Tom Colicchio, Mei Lin, and Gail Simmons

Sports + Fitness

9.17 Back to School Fit Crawl: Cyc Fitness
9.18 to 9.27 Essex County Trails & Sails Free Event Series
9.19 Yoga at Assembly Row (every Saturday)
9.22 + 9.29 CrossFit at Faneuil Hall
9.23 Free Zumba at Athleta
9.23 CrossFit on the Greenway
9.24 Back to School Fit Crawl: Orangetheory
9.27 Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk
9.28 Training for Warriors in Dewey Square
10.1 Back to School Fit Crawl: Glow Yoga
10.1 Thursday Morning Yoga at Boston Public Market
10.3 Boston Harbor Islands Regatta
10.4 Great America Hippity Hop Derby
10.17 + 10.18 Head of the Charles Regatta

Science & Technology

9.17 Refresh Boston: UX Insights from a Drunk Guy
9.18 PayPal Founder Max Levchin at the Kennedy School
9.19 liftUPlift Launch Party
9.29 Networking with a Cause at State Park
10.2 iMotions Spotlight Event at WeWork
10.4 #Tech4Democracy Showcase and Challenge
10.4 Where the Brain and the Law Intersect
10.4 De-stress Boston at MGH
10.5 When Doctors Report the News
10.6 State of the Podcast 2015
10.6 Solve Roundtable at MIT: FUEL
10.6 Cancer: Innovative Breakthroughs and Personal Journeys
10.7 Managing the Impact of Climate Change
10.7 Libraries: The Next Generation
10.8 Beautiful Brain at MGH
10.9 The Future of Privacy and Security in a Big Data World
11.5 to 11.14 City Awake Social Impact Festival

Food + Harvest Festivals

9.19 Free Stuffed Clams at the Hatch Shell
9.20 Mill City Grows Harvest Fest (Lowell)
9.24 Chicken and Rice Guys Day at MGH Blood Donor Center
9.26 Waltham Fields Farm Day
9.27 JP Urban Agriculture Fair
9.27 Central Square Festival of Dumplings
10.3 Let’s Talk About Food Festival
10.4 Boston Fermentation Festival
10.4 Somerville Community Growing Center Harvest Fest
10.24 Pemberton Farms Harvest Hoopla
10.24 to 10.25 Boston Veg Food Festival

Pumpkins!

Stargazing with your Sweetie 🙂

Museum of Science Astronomy After Hours (Fridays through 11.20)
Public Open Night @ the BU Coit Observatory (Every Wednesday)

Comments