HONK! Starts in Union Square and on Holland Street Days Before the Parade

The HONK! parade on Sunday, October 11 lasts two hours, from noon to 2 p.m. It steps off at Herbert and Day Streets and is expected to start reaching Harvard Square around 1:15 p.m. For a lot of people, that parade is the whole festival. In Somerville it's the last of four days. The rest takes place in Union Square bars and plazas, on residential loops around a Holland Street park, and at eight separate corners around Davis Square. Most of it ends before the brass bands head down Mass. Ave. toward Cambridge.

This is HONK!'s 21st year. Every listed event is free. It started in Davis Square and grew into an international movement, but the 2026 schedule still mostly runs at neighborhood scale. Here's how it unfolds, day by day and street by street, along with the new businesses that sit along the way.

Thursday is a Union Square and City Hall night

The festival opens on Thursday, October 8, on the second floor of Somerville City Hall at 93 Highland Ave. Looking Back at 20 Years of HONK! Festival of Activist Street Bands is a photo and poster retrospective curated by the HONK! organizing committee. The free opening reception runs 5 to 7 p.m. with light refreshments. "Come by and find a favorite memory or discover a new reason to love this festival," said Mayor Jake Wilson. The exhibit stays up during regular City Hall business hours after that night. That makes it the one piece of HONK! you can catch on a weekday lunch break the following week.

After the reception, the semi-official Pre-HONK! Brass Band Blowout moves to Union Square on two stages within walking distance of each other. Outdoors on the Union Square plaza, Fly By starts at 7 p.m. and Magnificent Danger closes at 9:30. Indoors at The Jungle Community Music Club, The Party Band starts at 8 p.m., followed by Conical Cacophony and Yes Ma'am Brass Band, with Emperor Norton Stationary Marching Band at 10:15.

Union Square has changed since last October, and some of those changes are still underway. NU Kitchen has closed its 195 Washington St. location after nearly ten years, according to Patch. First Crush owner Gabrielle Malina is building a permanent natural-wine bar and event space at 259 Washington St., the former Juliet Social Club. The First Crush site still says "coming this fall." Kima Cafe, a Korean and Asian-inspired café from Alex Kim of Glasser Coffee Co. and Coreanos, is planned for 75 Bow St. in the former Fortissimo Coffeehouse space. An August Whatnow report gave mid-September as the projected opening. Thursday's music takes place in a square where both new spots were announced over the summer.

Friday moves onto side streets

On Friday, October 9, Union Square has a second evening of music. Brass Balagan, Party Band, Funkrust Brass Band and Undertow Brass Band play Aeronaut from 6:20 to 9 p.m. Brass Solidarity and All for One Brass Band play Bow Market from 7 to 8:55. Bow Market is a short walk from the Kima Cafe address on Bow St.

Friday's bigger event takes place on residential streets. Lantern-making workshops run 4 to 6 p.m. at Hodgkins-Curtin Park on Holland Street, between Paulina St. and Simpson Ave. Puppeteers Cooperative, Spontaneous Celebrations and Extinction Rebellion lead the workshops. Participants gather at 6 p.m., and the parades step off at 6:30. These are small processions that loop through nearby streets and return to the park, scheduled to wrap by 7:30. HONK! publishes a separate route for each one, so you can see whether a parade will pass your block:

1. Parade #2, UNiTY Brass Band: Holland, Thorndike, Kingston, Campbell Park, Meaghan, Locke, Shea and Kingston, then back via Thorndike, Howard, Jay and Holland.
2. Parade #3, Sass-a-Brass: Holland, Gorham, Tannery Brook Row, Seven Pines, Yorktown, Malvern, Cameron and Holland.
3. Parade #4, brassterisk: through the Somerville Center for Adult Learning lot and walkway to Packard Avenue, then Ossipee, Mason, Broadway and Simpson Avenue.
4. Parade #5, Brass Liberation Orchestra: Paulina, Broadway, Wallace and Holland.
5. Parade #6, DC Activist Street Band: Holland, Wallace, Park, Chandler, Broadway, Leonard, Powder House Boulevard, Burnham, Broadway, Irving and Holland.
6. Parade #7, Bread & Puppet Circus Band: Cady Avenue, Corinthian Road, Broadway, through Teele Square and back along Holland.
7. Parade #8, JP HONK: starts at Pemberton Farms and walks Mass. Ave., Meacham Road, Buena Vista Road and Holland to the park.
8. East Somerville, Good Trouble Brass Band: starts at Connexion, 149 Broadway. No street-by-street route has been posted.

HONK! invites families and local artists to bring their own lights, and musicians to wear bike lights, glow sticks or anything else that blinks.

Parade #7 passes through Teele Square, which has a new restaurant this year. Liars opened at 1153 Broadway, in the former True Bistro space, with an announced opening date of August 20. It comes from the team behind Spoke Wine Bar in Davis Square. Paul Butler runs the kitchen, owner Mary Kurth and bar manager Katie Weismann round out the team, and the space is roughly double the size of Spoke. Its reservation listing shows Friday hours of 5 to 9:45 p.m. That leaves about two hours after a 7:30 lantern finish. Butler told Boston Magazine he wants the place to pay "homage to great taverns, izakayas, and bistros."

Saturday turns Davis Square into eight stages

Saturday, October 10 is the festival's biggest day. It's eight hours long, rain or shine, and spread across eight locations instead of one. The opening ceremony is at noon in Seven Hills Park, and bands play from 1 to 9 p.m. Sets start on the hour until 6 p.m. Evening sets run 45 minutes each, starting at 6, 6:45, 7:30 and 8:15.

The table shows the edges of the festival closing first. Elm at Grove and Holland at Winter finish after their 6:45 sets. The three central stages, 7 Hills Park, Statue Park and Davis Square Plaza, keep going until 9. Statue Park also looks different from past festivals. A ribbon-cutting on August 21 marked new placemaking art there, along with the activation of the Davis Square Slip Lane.

Street closures follow the same pattern. Elm Street from Davis Square to Grove Street closes around 10 a.m. and reopens between 9 and 10 p.m. Holland at Winter, Dover from Davis Square to Meacham Road, and Day at Herbert also close. HONK! lists detours at Holland and Buena Vista, Wallace and Cameron, and at College near Highland and Morrison. The festival's pages give no MBTA guidance, so anyone planning to take transit should check service separately.

The closed stretch of Elm becomes ArtHONK, an open-air space for interactive art-making and activism where people can make something to carry in Sunday's parade. The main schedule lists it as 1 to 5 p.m. The ArtHONK page gives 1 to 4:30, so if you're arriving late, plan around the earlier time. The same block is getting a new tenant. Yafa Bakery & Café, founded by Abdullah Awad, is working on a second Somerville location at 187 Elm St., the former Posto site. As CSIndie reported, staff confirmed in September that the expansion is still moving forward, but no opening date has been announced.

Saturday morning also overlaps with the Union Square Farmers Market, which runs 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. through October 31. That leaves time to shop in Union Square and still make the noon opening in Seven Hills Park.

Sunday is the shortest day, and it leaves town

Sunday's closures start earlier than the music. Day at Orchard and Herbert at Chester close at 10 a.m. Elm at Day follows at 11:30, Elm at Grove at 11:40, and a run of Elm Street intersections around 11:45. Day and Herbert stay closed to regular traffic from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. On the Cambridge side, Day at Mass. Ave. closes at 10 a.m., and Russell at Mass. Ave. and Orchard at Blake close at 11:45. Roads reopen as the parade passes.

The parade steps off promptly at noon. By early afternoon the bands are in Harvard Square, where HONK! performances continue on the main stage and other venues at Oktoberfest from 2 to 6 p.m. Somerville has hosted three days of the festival by then. Sunday afternoon is the one stretch of HONK! weekend that happens somewhere else.

The next few weeks in the same squares

The calendar keeps going after the brass leaves. Monster Mash takes over Somerville Avenue between Church Street and Union Square on Sunday, October 18, from 1 to 5 p.m., with local food vendors. The rain date is October 25. The Union Square Farmers Market has three Saturdays left after HONK!, ending October 31. The Davis Square Farmers Market runs on Wednesdays in the municipal lot beside Davis Square Plaza, with dates through November 25.

Magoun Square, away from the festival's posted routes, has a new neighborhood pub. Saint Brigid's Well opened at 525 Medford St. in the former Daddy Jones space, and Boston Restaurant Talk reported on October 2 that it was open. Licensing-meeting material identifies Michael John Queally, a bartender and manager at The Druid in Cambridge, as the person behind it. The pub's own description promises fish and chips, shepherd's pie and Irish coffee.

If HONK! weekend is a good time to think about your place in Somerville, whether you're keeping a home near Davis, renting out a unit near Union Square or considering a move closer to the lantern routes, Urban Circle Realty is glad to help. Connect with Sherean and the Urban Circle team to talk through your Boston-area real estate plans.