If you have driven past Curtis Park on a September Saturday and assumed the same people who ran the art fair last year are running it again this year, you would be wrong. For the first time in its seven-year history, Art on the Green has a new producer. The farmers market a few miles away at Landmark Way is winding down its season on a schedule nobody at City Hall controls. And the one event on the fall calendar that actually belongs to the city, the one that checks whether you live here before it lets you in, opens registration in two days.
Three events, all carrying the Greenwood Village name, all landing within about ten days of each other. Three completely different people deciding how they run.
The Festival That Isn't Run By Who You Think
Art on the Green has been a fixture at Curtis Park, next to the Curtis Center for the Arts at 2349 East Orchard Road, for six years running. This year marks its seventh, and it is also the first year someone new is calling the shots. Colorado Art Weekend, operating through ColoradoArtShows.com, has taken over production and artist management of the festival for the 2026 season. The organization has said publicly that it understands the change might feel uncomfortable to artists who have exhibited here for years, and that its intent is to steward the event rather than reinvent it.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. The festival still happens on the same lawn, adjacent to the same city-run cultural building, on the same weekend pattern it always has. This year that means Saturday, September 19, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, September 20, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Dozens of artist booths, food trucks, live music, and hands-on art activities are still part of the plan. What changed is who answers the phone when something goes wrong, who recruits the artists, and who decides what the festival looks like five years from now.
Parking follows the same pattern as prior years too. The lot between Aspen Academy and the Curtis Center borders the east side of the festival grounds, and there is a second lot just south across Orchard Road. Neither requires a ticket, because the festival itself is free and open to anyone who shows up, no residency check involved.
That last part is worth sitting with. Sponsor materials describing this year's audience put the crowd at roughly 60 to 70 percent local or south-metro Denver, meaning Greenwood Village, Cherry Hills Village, Centennial, and Lone Tree residents make up the bulk of attendance even though the fair markets itself as an all-Colorado event with no gate checking zip codes. It behaves like a neighborhood event without ever asking anyone to prove they belong to the neighborhood.
The Market That Was Never the City's to Begin With
A few miles from Curtis Park, the Landmark Greenwood Village Fresh Market has been running its own Saturday season at 7600 Landmark Way, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., since June. This one was never a city program in the first place. It operates out of the Landmark retail development, the same mixed-use complex that includes Hapa Sushi, Comedy Works, and the Landmark Theatre, and its season runs on the private development's calendar rather than the city's parks and recreation schedule.
The market's own season description puts its run at June through September, which means the next couple of Saturdays are effectively its last of the year. Nobody registers to attend. Nobody checks an address. You show up, you buy produce and baked goods from whichever vendors set up that week, and when the season ends, it ends because a private landlord decided the season was over, not because a city calendar said so.
Here is the detail that ties these first two threads together. September 19, the same Saturday that Art on the Green opens under its new producer at Curtis Park, falls right at the tail end of the Landmark market's scheduled season a short drive away. Two long-running Greenwood Village traditions, changing shape or winding down on the same morning, run by two organizations that have nothing to do with each other and nothing to do with the city.
The One Event That Actually Checks Your Address
Then there is Greenwood Village Fall Fest, at Carson Park and City Hall, 6060 South Quebec Street. This is the one event on the fall calendar that is genuinely, unambiguously run by the city, and it is the only one of the three that gates entry by residency. It is billed explicitly as a special event for Greenwood Village residents only. Tickets are required, they are free, and registration opens at 6 a.m. on September 9, two days from now.
The event itself is built for families: music, art projects, games, refreshments, inflatables, and a costume contest, plus something called the Pumpkin Patch Dash. It sits at Carson Park, the same park where the city's Parks, Trails, and Recreation Department has been gathering resident input this year on a new public art installation, so the ground itself is mid-transition even as the festival programming stays consistent with prior years.
The contrast with the other two events is almost exact reversal. The art fair calls itself all-Colorado but draws mostly from the immediate area. The farmers market never asked anyone where they lived. Fall Fest is the only one of the three that will actually turn you away at the door if you cannot prove you belong here, and it is also the only one run directly by the city whose name sits in front of all three events.
| Event | Who Runs It | Where | Who Can Attend | How You Get In |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Art on the Green | Colorado Art Weekend (new for 2026) | Curtis Park, 2349 E Orchard Rd | Anyone | Free, no registration |
| Landmark Fresh Market | Private, Landmark development | 7600 Landmark Way | Anyone | Free, walk up |
| Fall Fest | City of Greenwood Village | Carson Park & City Hall, 6060 S Quebec St | Residents only | Free ticket, registration required |
Why the Order Matters This Month
None of this changes what any of these events actually feel like on the ground. The art fair will still have the same lawn, the same food trucks, the same rotation of local painters and printmakers setting up booths under the same September sky. The market will still smell like whatever the bakers brought that week. Fall Fest will still hand out popcorn and run a costume contest for kids who have done it every year of their lives.
What changes is the assumption that everything wearing the Greenwood Village name operates the same way, on the same clock, answerable to the same office. It doesn't. One event just got handed to an outside producer for the first time in its history. One event was never the city's to begin with. And one event, the only one that will actually ask if you live here, opens its registration window in two days, not two weeks.
If you have been treating September in Greenwood Village as one continuous block of programming, this is the month that makes the seams visible. Pay attention to which invitation you are actually getting, and who is sending it.
If you are weighing a move in or around Greenwood Village, or thinking about what a home here is actually worth in a market that keeps shifting underneath these same civic calendars, The Corbitt Group has spent years tracking not just the listings but the texture of daily life in these neighborhoods. Reach out when you are ready for a conversation grounded in the details that actually matter here.
