By the first of October, most people along the Gulf Coast are ready to put summer behind them, and the October 2025 festivals calendar gave them plenty of reasons to get outside. The month brought the 52nd Annual National Shrimp Festival to Gulf Shores, a weekend devoted to mushrooms near Weeks Bay, the 37th Annual Jubilee Festival of Arts in Daphne, a sold-out Marcus King Band show in Fairhope and a month-long autumn celebration at Bellingrath Gardens in Theodore. This look back at those five highlights also serves as a primer on some of the region’s most enduring fall traditions.
Cooler air, lower humidity and the steady rhythm of football Saturdays make October one of the most comfortable months on the coast, and festival organizers across Mobile and Baldwin counties schedule accordingly. The result is a stretch of weeks when nearly every weekend holds something worth the drive.
The 52nd National Shrimp Festival in Gulf Shores
The largest of the month’s events, the 52nd Annual National Shrimp Festival, was held October 9 through 12 at 101 Gulf Shores Parkway, the main public beach in Gulf Shores. For more than 50 years the volunteer-driven festival has been a fixture of fall on the Alabama coast, and organizers have described attendance in the range of nearly 250,000 people over four days.
The 2025 festival followed its familiar recipe:
- Four days of music from local and national acts
- Seafood and other festival food
- Shopping, fine art and craft workshops
- A sand sculpture contest
- The Miss Shrimp Festival Pageant
- The Shrimp Festival 5K and 10K runs
- Supervised arts, crafts, games and activities for children
Admission was free. The festival’s longevity says a great deal about Gulf Shores. It began in the early 1970s as a way to extend the tourist season past Labor Day and celebrate the shrimping industry that helped build coastal Alabama’s economy. Today it is one of the largest festivals in the state and a major economic engine for local businesses in the weeks after the summer crowds thin out. The festival has continued since, with the 53rd edition set for October 2026.
Gulf Coast Fungi Fest Near Weeks Bay
October 17 through 19 brought a very different kind of festival: the Gulf Coast Fungi Fest at Weeks Bay Plantation, with a Fairhope address. The event is devoted entirely to mushrooms and the broader world of fungi, and it has found an enthusiastic audience since its debut.
The inaugural festival in 2023 drew nearly 700 experts, enthusiasts, musicians and food lovers from across the region and beyond. The 2025 edition again ran three days and included speakers, live music, workshops, contests, foraging activities and overnight camping.
The setting helps explain the interest. The land around Weeks Bay, a small bay fed by the Fish and Magnolia rivers on the eastern side of Mobile Bay, is rich in wetlands, hardwood bottoms and pine forest. The area is home to the Weeks Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, one of the nation’s network of protected estuaries used for research and education. Humid coastal forests like these are fertile ground for a wide variety of fungi, and a festival that invites people to learn how to identify them, cook with them and appreciate their role in the ecosystem fits naturally into the landscape.
Anyone interested in foraging should remember that many wild mushrooms are toxic and some are deadly. Festivals like this one are valuable precisely because they connect newcomers with experienced guides rather than leaving them to guess.
The 37th Jubilee Festival of Arts in Olde Towne Daphne
The following weekend, October 18 and 19, the 37th Annual Jubilee Festival of Arts returned to W.O. Lott Park and the oak-lined streets of Olde Towne Daphne. Hosted each year by the Eastern Shore Chamber of Commerce and the City of Daphne, the festival pairs art, music and local food with the small-town charm of Daphne’s historic core.
The 2025 festival featured more than 140 local and regional artists, food vendors, local musicians, free kids’ art activities and a high school art exhibit. A tailgater area streamed football games all weekend, a practical concession to the reality of an October weekend in Alabama. Organizers describe the festival’s purpose as supporting tourism and the arts while spotlighting Olde Towne Daphne.
The festival’s name nods to one of the Eastern Shore’s most famous natural events. A jubilee occurs when oxygen-poor water pushes fish, crabs, shrimp and flounder into the shallows along the shoreline, usually on summer nights, sending residents rushing to the water with buckets, nets and gigs. Mobile Bay is one of very few places in the world where the phenomenon occurs regularly, and Daphne proudly calls itself the Jubilee City.
Marcus King Band at Fairhope’s Halstead Amphitheater
Music fans had an October 12 date circled for the Marcus King Band at the Halstead Amphitheater, 450 Fairhope Ave., part of Fairhope’s Live at Five concert series. The show, featuring special guest Angel White-King, was in support of the band’s most recent album, “Darling Blue.” Individual tickets sold out ahead of the performance.
The fall Live at Five season offered other shows for season pass holders, including Wet Willie on October 3, Bag of Donuts on November 21 and the inaugural Jacob Hall Memorial Jam on December 19.
Marcus King, a South Carolina native, has built a national following as a guitarist and singer who blends Southern rock, soul, blues and country. Booking an artist of that profile in an outdoor venue in downtown Fairhope reflects how the city’s Live at Five series has grown into a genuine draw for touring acts, giving Eastern Shore residents a chance to see national performers without crossing the bay or driving to Pensacola.
The Great Bellingrath Harvest in Theodore
Running throughout the month, the Great Bellingrath Harvest kicked off in late September and continued into early November at Bellingrath Gardens and Home in Theodore. The 2025 season was the celebration’s second year, and it transformed the gardens into an autumn landscape filled with scarecrows, pumpkin displays and family-friendly events on a published schedule.
Bellingrath is one of the Mobile area’s best-known attractions. The estate on the Fowl River was developed by Walter and Bessie Bellingrath, and the gardens opened to the public in the 1930s. Today the 65-acre gardens and the Bellingrath home draw visitors year-round, from spring azaleas to the Magic Christmas in Lights display each winter. The Harvest celebration adds a fall chapter to that calendar, bridging the gap between the summer season and the holiday lights.
More Ways to Enjoy a Gulf Coast Fall
The five highlights above were only part of the picture. October weekends on the coast are crowded with smaller festivals, church fairs, fishing tournaments, school fundraisers and concerts, many of them free. For families and visitors, the key is to plan ahead, since popular events often overlap and traffic near festival sites can be heavy.
- Arrive early for the Shrimp Festival, and consider shuttles where offered, since beach parking fills quickly.
- Bring cash as a backup at arts festivals, even though most vendors accept cards.
- Dress in layers. October mornings can be cool while afternoons still feel like summer.
- Check organizers’ websites for weather updates, as tropical systems can still affect the coast in early fall.
Looking Ahead to Future Octobers
Most of these events are annual, but dates, venues, lineups and ticket prices change from year to year. Readers planning to attend a future Shrimp Festival, Fungi Fest, Jubilee Festival, Live at Five concert or Bellingrath Harvest should confirm current details directly with the organizers.
What does not change is the appeal. October is when the Gulf Coast shows off: shrimp on the beach, art under the oaks, music in the open air and gardens dressed for autumn. The October 2025 lineup was a reminder of why so many residents consider this the best month of the year to live here.