For most of the year, the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden is a place you go to watch animals. For one month each fall, it becomes a place you go to watch faces — thousands of them, carved into pumpkins, lit from within, and arranged along a half-mile trail that winds through the grounds after dark.
The event is Jack O'Lantern Glow, and 2026 marks its third year. Running nightly from October 2 through October 31 — closed on Mondays, October 5, 12, and 19 — it has grown quickly into one of the region's signature autumn attractions. More than 6,000 hand-carved jack o'lanterns are arranged across 20 themed areas, with designs that range from glowing animals and familiar faces to elaborate works of pumpkin art. The zoo bills it as the largest event of its kind in the Tri-state area, and by the numbers, that claim is hard to argue with.
"Jack O'Lantern Glow was already the largest event of its kind in the Tri-state area, and we've added even more pumpkins to the mix this year," said Cincinnati Zoo events manager Sydney Boudreaux. "The layout of the event has also been updated to accommodate more themes. The pumpkins — all hand carved and decorated by talented local artists — are so impressive. There is something new and photo-worthy around every corner!"
The event is presented by Medpace, and it is a separately ticketed affair: it is not included with regular zoo admission or with a zoo membership, though members can get a discount online. Adult tickets run roughly $15 to $25 depending on the day and time, with child admission in the $10 to $20 range. Hours vary by night as well. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays the trail runs 5:30 to 9 p.m., with the first entry timeslot at 6 p.m. and the last at 8:45 p.m.; Thursday through Sunday it stays open until 10 p.m., with the last timeslot at 9:45 p.m.
What sets the event apart from a typical haunted house or corn maze is that it is neither. It is a walk-through, general-admission experience — no reserved seats, no timed scares, no gore. The pumpkins are the stars, and they are real craft objects rather than mass-produced props. Organizers say every jack o'lantern in the show is hand-carved with a unique design, and that artists from across the Tri-state come together to do the work. The themes rotate through subjects like Under the Sea, Day of the Dead, Cincinnati Landmarks, Zoo Safari, dinosaurs, princesses, and Hollywood favorites — a mix meant to give visitors something new around every bend.
The trail is also set to lights, sound, and special effects, and the zoo keeps a couple of its indoor animal buildings open late for the occasion: the Reptile House and the Night Hunters building stay open nightly until 9 p.m., giving families a chance to see nocturnal animals while they are actually active.
The origin story is short but telling. Jack O'Lantern Glow debuted in 2024 as a brand-new Halloween attraction for the zoo, opening October 3 of that year with roughly 5,000 artificial pumpkins carved by local artists along the same half-mile route. That first season ran on a limited schedule — weekends through October, then a final stretch from October 18 through Halloween. It was an immediate enough success that the zoo brought it back bigger in 2025, when the count climbed past 6,000 pumpkins and the event expanded into a longer run of October dates. The 2026 edition is the third, and the growth from 5,000 to more than 6,000 pumpkins — plus a reworked layout to fit additional themes — reflects an event that is still being scaled up rather than merely repeated.
That trajectory is notable for a zoo. The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, at 3400 Vine St. in the Avondale neighborhood, is one of the oldest and most storied zoos in the country, and its fall calendar already included a daytime HallZOOween trick-or-treat event. Jack O'Lantern Glow gave it something it did not previously have: a nighttime, after-hours draw built around atmosphere rather than animals. The choice to source the carving to local artists, rather than importing a prefabricated display, is central to the pitch — it turns the trail into a showcase for regional creative labor as much as a seasonal spectacle.
For visitors, the practical appeal is the format. Because it is a walk-through trail with general admission rather than a seated show, families can move at their own pace, and the event is explicitly designed to be family-friendly and non-scary — "great for all ages," in the zoo's words. The half-mile route is long enough to feel like an outing and short enough for young children, and the themed zones give the walk a sense of progression. It is, in effect, a pumpkin gallery installed in a zoo.
There is also something quietly old-fashioned about the whole enterprise. The jack o'lantern is an American autumn staple with roots in Irish folklore, and the appeal of a carved, candle-lit gourd has never really needed updating. What the Cincinnati Zoo has done is apply scale and curation to that instinct: 6,000 of them, lit and grouped and scored to music, arranged so that a visitor turns a corner and finds a new set of faces staring back. The result is less a Halloween scare than a Halloween stroll — and, three years in, a fall tradition the zoo clearly intends to keep growing.