On the evening of October 24, 2026, the Honolulu Zoo is listed as hosting Octo-Bear-Fest: Boos & Brews, a Halloween event that pairs local beer with family fun. The listing gives the hours as 5:00 to 9:00 p.m., with general admission advertised at 13.07 dollars.
A word of caution before you plan around it: this event is, as of this writing, thin on the ground. The only listing I could find is on the Hawaii events aggregator AlohaCalendar, which carries a two-sentence description and no organizer contact, ticketing link or press release. No page for Octo-Bear-Fest appears on the Honolulu Zoo or Honolulu Zoo Society website, and it does not show up in KITV's roundup of Halloween events across the islands. That absence is not proof the event is fictional — zoo fundraisers are often announced closer to the date, and a 2026 calendar item may simply not have been publicized yet — but anyone planning to attend should confirm with the zoo directly before buying anything or building an evening around it.
The listing also contains a small geographic muddle worth untangling. It gives the venue as "Diamond Head, Urban Honolulu," while the description says the party is "at the Zoo." Those are not actually in conflict. The Honolulu Zoo sits at the base of Diamond Head crater in Waikiki, on the Kapahulu edge of Queen Kapiʻolani Park, so "Diamond Head" is a reasonable shorthand for the neighborhood even though the gates are on Kapahulu and Monsarrat avenues. The zoo's own materials describe its sun bear exhibit as being "at the base of Diamond Head," which is likely where the aggregator's venue field came from.
That sun bear exhibit is the reason the event has a name at all. The pun works on two levels: October is the eighth month of the old Roman calendar, hence "octo," and the zoo's resident bears are Malayan sun bears, the smallest of the world's bear species. The zoo has kept sun bears for years. Its male, Blackie, arrived on November 6, 2008. In late 2022 the zoo welcomed a female, Scruffy, a roughly 30-year-old, 73-pound bear born in Malaysia who was transferred from the Cleveland Zoo — where, as it happens, she and Blackie had been housed together back in 2008. Zoo director Linda Santos described the reunion at the time: "It was a touching reunion as Scruffy and Blackie immediately greeted each other through the gate when Scruffy arrived." Staff said the pair, given their ages, were not considered a breeding pair, and Scruffy went through a quarantine period before integration into the shared habitat. Visitors can find them near the Kamehameha and Koa butterfly art wall.
Malayan sun bears are listed as vulnerable, and they are among the less familiar species in American zoos. Native to the tropical forests of Southeast Asia, they are typically black with pale muzzles and distinctive sickle-shaped claws, and most adults weigh under 200 pounds. They are omnivores that use unusually long tongues to extract insects, honey and fruit, and because their home forests offer food year-round, they do not hibernate. That last fact makes them a slightly odd mascot for an autumn festival — but it also makes the conservation pitch straightforward: the bears at the base of Diamond Head are ambassadors for a species under pressure from habitat loss half a world away.
The format described in the listing is a familiar one for zoo fundraisers on the mainland, and increasingly in Hawaii: a licensed evening event where local breweries pour samples for adults while families work a Trunk-or-Treat line of decorated cars handing out candy, with a costume contest and live music rounding out the night. The combination lets a zoo sell one ticket to two audiences at once — parents who want a beer and kids who want candy — while the proceeds support animal care and conservation. At the advertised price, it is a notably cheap night out by Honolulu standards, which is part of the appeal and also part of the reason to verify before you go.
What is not yet known is who organizes Octo-Bear-Fest, whether it is a first-year event or a returning one, which breweries are participating, or whether the thirteen-dollar figure covers beer samples or only entry. None of that appears in any source I could find. The Honolulu Zoo Society does run a well-established summer concert series, the Wildest Show, which uses the Monsarrat Avenue gate and confines guests to the Great Lawn — a useful precedent for how the zoo handles after-hours events, but not evidence about this one.
So the honest summary is this: a Halloween beer-and-family festival at the Honolulu Zoo, themed around the zoo's Malayan sun bears, is listed for the evening of October 24, 2026, at a low general-admission price. The premise is plausible, the venue is real, and the bears are very real. The event's own footprint, for now, is a single aggregator page. Check with the zoo before you put on the costume.