Everything on the calendar with no door price. Museum free nights, farmers’ markets, gallery openings, street festivals and pay-what-you-can rooms. 44 listings, soonest first.
Toronto’s longest-running street festival, through the Victorian half of the east end. Saturday 11am–8pm, Sunday 11am–7pm.
A monthly walk-and-talk for the design community, out on a Saturday afternoon. This one crosses Trinity Bellwoods arguing about whether a design can be built to provoke an emotion on purpose.
Ontario growers in a former brick factory, snow or shine. Outdoors May to October, indoors from 9am November to April. Walk the ravine trails after.
A volunteer-run DIY workshop: their stands, their tools, their advice, your hands. No appointment — but fill in the waiver on a first visit. You can build a bike from parts if you have the patience.
Architect-led walks through Downtown Yonge, free, through to October 24. The society’s nine thematic tours elsewhere in the city are $15 and run 90 to 120 minutes.
TIFF Cinematheque and Next Wave put a screen up in the square for the four nights of Festival Street, showing at 10pm with open captions, rain or shine. City Lights, The F Word, Madagascar and one more, a night each.
An hour-long guided walk that meets at the Welcome Desk in Building 14 and runs rain or shine.
Three firings a day in the shadow of the Gardiner, among the city’s oldest buildings. Weather permitting. The site itself is open Wednesday to Sunday.
The Rex runs several sets a night and the early one is pay what you can, no reservations: 5pm daily, plus a 2pm matinee at weekends. The bill runs from student ensembles out of U of T and Humber to established Toronto quartets and big bands.
Forty years of Rebecca Baird and Kenny Alvin Baird, shown alongside work by Inuk artist Michael Massie. Free, and usually empty on a weekday afternoon.
The house can only be seen on the tour, and the tour is free. Hourly from 11:15am, last one at 4. The grounds are yours either way.
Farmers have taken the north building on Saturdays since 1803, now in the new hall that opened in 2026. Doors from five in the morning.
The Main and University galleries reopen after installation, with a fall opening reception on September 9, 6–8pm. Free, two minutes from Dundas station.
One of the few markets in the city that runs all year — outdoors along the walkways May to October, inside the main Barn November to April.
King Street closes between Peter and University for four days of the film festival — art installations, live music, food trucks and an art market, with no ticket needed for any of it. The eleventh year, and about half a million people pass through.
The east end’s Saturday morning ritual, in the shade at the north end of the park. Last market of the season is October 17.
Free for everyone, every Sunday, for the museum’s shorter afternoon hours.
Bring the book you're currently reading. That's it - that's the whole assignment.
A Sunday morning group run that starts and finishes at Heval on Spadina. The café puts on a runners’ combo afterwards and takes a quarter off coffee until one.
Formerly the Leslieville Flea. Furniture, records and mid-century everything on the lawn of a two-hundred-year-old farmhouse. Last Sunday of the season is October 4.
A Monday-evening market in Roncesvalles — dinner from a stall, eaten on the grass while the dog park fills up. Runs to October 26.
A conversation about Ramírez Jonas's participatory works, from Key to the City and The Commons to Public Trust, and how everyday acts of exchange and promise become ways of imagining new social contracts.
An interactive artwork with a large marquee and two eight-foot tables staffed by local performers: you make a promise aloud, swearing on a sacred text or an object that matters to you, and it is recorded in a drawing.
An interactive artwork with a large-scale marquee and two eight-foot tables staffed by performers: you make a promise out loud, swearing on a sacred text or an object of your choosing, and it's recorded in a drawing you.
The indoor leg of the touring promise-making installation, where performers record your promise in a drawing and post it on the marquee.
Tuesday afternoons at the Dundas end of the park. Seasonal, and the excuse you needed to stay until dark. Runs to October 27.
Free galleries during extended Wednesday hours. Tickets are in person only, at the guest services desk. Worth the trip up for the building and the reflecting pools alone.
One night a week the makerspace opens to anyone, membership or not — 3D printers, laser cutter, CNC router and a wood shop. Down the alleyway; buzz to be let in.
Free every Wednesday afternoon and evening, no booking needed. Three floors of ceramics across from the ROM, done in an hour. Always free for students, under-18s and Indigenous Peoples.
Thursday evenings are pay-what-you-can. Four and a half thousand years of footwear, which is better than it sounds.
All-organic and year-round, at the clubhouse. Small enough to talk to everyone selling.
The largest Ukrainian street festival in North America, along Bloor West. Go for the varenyky, stay for the dancing.
Toronto’s Polish street festival closes Roncesvalles Avenue for its twentieth year, with food, music and the main stage up near Wright Avenue. It runs late on the Saturday and winds up early Sunday evening.
The Canadian Opera Company gives free concerts in the glass-walled amphitheatre above the Four Seasons Centre lobby, most at noon on a weekday and a few in the afternoon or evening. There are 120 seats handed out first come, everyone else stands, and there is no late seating once a performance starts.
Canada’s largest literary festival, free, over two days — small presses, magazine tables, and authors reading in tents. Its 37th year.
The 220-metre figure-eight threaded between the columns of the Gardiner closes for the summer today. Go, or wait for the ice near Christmas.
Cars out, everyone else in: drum circles, stoop sales, and the market at its loudest. Augusta stays closed to 10pm. Last Sunday of the month, May to October.
Nyla Innuksuk's film, in which a group of Inuit girls in a remote Arctic community fight off an alien invasion, screens free on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Cash taken at the door and part of that day's concession sales go to the Indian Residential School Survivors Society.
Free contemporary art from 7pm to 7am. Pick one neighbourhood and walk it properly instead of chasing the map.
Free admission on the first Wednesday night of the month — not every Wednesday. Tickets are released online at 10am the Monday before, two per person, and they go.
The 1992 BBC hoax broadcast that sent a live crew into the most haunted house in Britain on Halloween night and panicked a good part of its audience. Part of Apparatus Theory, Saffron Maeve's bimonthly series on films about filmmaking.
Cobblestones, a very large tree lit on opening night at 6pm, and mulled wine at a markup. Runs to January 3 — go on a weekday.
Running since 1905 and free from any curb on the route. Stand north of Bloor if you want to see anything.
Live music from 6pm, the official tree lit at 6:30, and the rink opens. Free. The lights stay on nightly until 11pm through to January 7.