Anyone who has watched an October sunset over Mobile Bay or Pensacola Bay knows the sky seems to put on a better show in the fall. There is a reason for that. As autumn days shorten and the sun sits lower on the horizon, its light travels farther through the atmosphere before reaching our eyes, interacting with more air molecules along the way, while drier, cooler air lets more of those reds, oranges, pinks and purples through without being scattered by moisture. The October 2024 festival season on the Gulf Coast offered plenty of chances to catch those sunsets, with a lineup built around festivals of every kind, from dragon boats and shrimp to mushrooms and a brand-new harvest celebration.
This look back at October 2024 revisits five headline events and a long list of other happenings that filled the month across Mobile, Baldwin and Escambia counties.
Pensacola Dragon Boat Festival Marks 10 Years
On October 12, the 10th Annual Pensacola Dragon Boat Festival brought 40 teams to Bayview Park to race on a 250-meter course. The anniversary event drew more than 7,500 spectators and participants, according to organizers, with a full day of races, athletes’ village festivities, and arts, crafts and food vendors. The registration deadline for teams was October 3, 2024.
A dragon boat is a long, narrow canoe with 10 rows of paddlers, 20 in all, plus a steersperson in the stern and a drummer seated near the carved dragon’s head at the bow. The drummer sets the stroke rate, and the crew’s ability to paddle in perfect unison often decides races more than raw strength.
Modern dragon boat racing as an international sport traces to Hong Kong in 1976, but the tradition’s roots in China reach back more than 2,000 years. Today, community festivals like Pensacola’s have made the sport popular with corporate teams, church groups, cancer survivor crews and friends who simply want a fun reason to train together.
Bayview Park, on the shore of Bayou Texar in east Pensacola, provides calm, sheltered water and plenty of room on shore for spectators and team tents, making it a well-suited venue for a sport that depends on flat water.
The National Shrimp Festival’s 51st Year
The region’s biggest October gathering, the 51st Annual National Shrimp Festival, ran October 10 through 13 at 101 Gulf Shores Parkway in Gulf Shores. The volunteer-driven festival has anchored fall on the Alabama coast for more than half a century, with organizers citing crowds of nearly 250,000 over four days.
The 2024 edition offered music from local and national acts, food, shopping, fine art and craft workshops, along with a sand sculpture contest, the Miss Shrimp Festival Pageant and the Shrimp Festival 5K and 10K runs. Supervised arts, crafts, games and activities kept children busy. Admission was free.
The Shrimp Festival was created in the early 1970s to extend Gulf Shores’ tourist season into the fall and to honor the shrimping industry that shaped coastal Alabama. Its continued success has helped turn October into one of the busiest months of the year for the beach towns.
Fungi Fest and the Jubilee Festival of Arts
The third weekend of the month brought two very different Baldwin County festivals.
From October 18 through 20, the Gulf Coast Fungi Fest returned to Weeks Bay Plantation, which carries a Fairhope address. The inaugural festival at the site in 2023 drew nearly 700 experts, enthusiasts, musicians and food lovers. The 2024 festival again stretched over three days with speakers, live music, workshops, contests, foraging activities and overnight camping.
The forests and wetlands around Weeks Bay, where the Fish and Magnolia rivers meet before flowing into Mobile Bay, support an extraordinary diversity of plant and fungal life, and the area is protected in part by the Weeks Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. A festival that teaches people to recognize and appreciate mushrooms, safely and with expert guidance, is a natural fit.
A day later, on October 19 and 20, the 36th Annual Jubilee Festival of Arts filled W.O. Lott Park and the oak-shaded streets of Olde Towne Daphne. Hosted by the Eastern Shore Chamber of Commerce and the City of Daphne, the festival featured more than 140 local and regional artists, food, local musicians, free kids’ art activities, high school art exhibits and a tailgater area streaming football games throughout the weekend.
The festival takes its name from the jubilee, the rare natural event in which fish, crabs and shrimp crowd into the shallows along the Eastern Shore, usually on summer nights when oxygen levels in the bay drop. Daphne calls itself the Jubilee City in honor of the phenomenon.
A New Tradition Begins at Bellingrath Gardens
October 2024 also marked the debut of the Great Bellingrath Harvest at Bellingrath Gardens and Home in Theodore. The new festival kicked off in late September with the Harvest Market and an ongoing display of Scarecrows in the Garden. Beginning the second week of October, the gardens were transformed into an autumn showcase with more than 5,000 pumpkins displayed throughout the grounds, along with family-friendly events on a schedule running through October 31.
Bellingrath, the former estate of Walter and Bessie Bellingrath on the Fowl River, opened its gardens to the public in the 1930s and is best known for its spring azaleas and its winter Magic Christmas in Lights display. The Harvest filled a gap in that calendar, and the celebration returned for a second year in 2025.
Other October 2024 Events Worth Remembering
The five headliners were only the beginning. The month’s calendar was packed with concerts, festivals and community events across the region, including:
- Trombone Shorty with Orleans Avenue in Pensacola on October 4
- Freedom Fest and Bama Coast Cruisin’ in Orange Beach, October 4 and 5
- Alabama Coastal Birdfest in Spanish Fort, October 4 through 6
- Pensacola Symphony Orchestra’s opening night at the Saenger Theatre in Pensacola on October 5
- The Dauphin Street Beer Festival in Mobile on October 5
- OWA Oktoberfest in Foley on October 5
- The Original Wailers at the Halstead Amphitheater in Fairhope on October 11
- Black Jacket Symphony’s “Madman Across the Water” at the Saenger Theatre in Pensacola on October 12
- Post Malone in concert at The Wharf in Orange Beach on October 17
- Marshall Tucker Band at the Saenger Theatre in Pensacola on October 24
- The Foley Witches Ride in Foley on October 28
That list shows the breadth of the Gulf Coast’s fall season. In a single month, residents could hear New Orleans brass and funk, a symphony orchestra, reggae, classic Southern rock and a global pop star, then spend the next weekend birdwatching during fall migration or watching costumed riders pedal through Foley for charity.
Tips for Enjoying a Gulf Coast October
October’s festivals share the same practical challenges: crowds, parking and changeable weather. A few habits make a big difference:
- Check event websites the morning of, since late-season tropical weather can still cause changes.
- Use shuttles or carpool for the Shrimp Festival and other beach events.
- Bring a light jacket for evening concerts and camping at events like Fungi Fest.
- Budget time between events. Many festivals overlap, and traffic on U.S. 98 and the Foley Beach Express can be heavy on busy weekends.
Looking Ahead
Most of the events above are annual, but dates, formats and lineups change from year to year. Readers who hope to attend a future dragon boat race, Shrimp Festival, Fungi Fest, Jubilee Festival or Bellingrath Harvest should confirm current details with the organizers. Whatever the specific lineup, October on the Gulf Coast reliably delivers festivals, football and some of the most spectacular sunsets of the year.