On the last morning of October, the parking lot of the Oasis Event Center on Ellison Drive NW will fill with something other than cars: open trunks, draped in cobwebs and orange lights, doling out candy to kids in costume. That's the centerpiece of the Fall Fest & Trunk-or-Treat, a free community Halloween gathering running Saturday, October 31, 2026, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 3700 Ellison Dr NW on Albuquerque's west side.
The event is being put on by two local small businesses, Mountain Moon Creations and Dances With Flames, and it is deliberately built as an open-gate affair. There is no ticket to buy and no capacity cap to worry about; the listing notes that admission is free, with food and vendor purchases sold separately. Families are asked to come in costume and stay for the day.
What's on offer is a fairly full slate for a single parking lot: trunk-or-treating, a lineup of local vendors, a car show, and food trucks. The combination is a familiar one in Albuquerque's fall calendar, but the pairing of a car show with a trunk-or-treat is a neat bit of economy — the same vehicles that draw the gearheads supply the candy stations for the kids.
The two organizers come from different corners of the local maker scene. Dances With Flames is a small-batch home fragrance and body-care outfit based on Osuna Road NW in Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, just north of the city. Its line, according to its Visit Albuquerque listing, runs to candles and "velvet-soft essentials," pitched as a way to bring "the spa to your sanctuary" — "the perfect harmony of fire, fragrance and feeling." Mountain Moon Creations has been running pop-up markets around Albuquerque, including a Balloon Fiesta-season pop-up and a summer pop-up promoted through the local r/ABQEvents forum, which fits the vendor-market half of the Halloween program.
The venue itself is a newer addition to the city's west side. Oasis Event Center markets itself as a flexible space — "where inside elegance meets courtyard charm" — with indoor rooms and an outdoor courtyard, banquet and theater-style floor plans, A/V and customizable lighting, and parking on site. Its public calendar leans heavily on themed nightlife: foam parties, all-white parties, comedy shows, a Magic Hunks date, a reggaeton night. A free, daytime, family Halloween festival is a different kind of booking for the room, and it points to the venue's ambition to be a neighborhood gathering place as well as a ticketed night-out destination.
For anyone planning to go, the practical notes are simple. The event runs six hours, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., so an early arrival is the safer bet both for parking and for candy. Admission is free and no reservation is required, though the event is listed on AllEvents, which handles ticketing for the listing. Costumes are encouraged. Food and vendor purchases are separate from admission.
Halloween 2026 falls on a Saturday, which is a small piece of luck for a family event: no school-night curfew to work around, and a full day for a trunk-or-treat that would otherwise be squeezed into an evening. The Fall Fest runs through the afternoon rather than after dark, which makes it an option for younger kids who won't make it to a nighttime trick-or-treat route.
Beyond the listing itself, there is little independent coverage of the event yet, and neither organizer maintains an easily searchable public page for it. What is clear is the shape of the thing: two small local businesses, a west-side event center with a courtyard, a parking lot full of decorated cars, and a free morning of candy and costumed kids. For a city whose fall identity is so thoroughly claimed by the Balloon Fiesta in early October, the last Saturday of the month belongs to the neighborhoods — and this is one of the places to spend it.