2026 Hungry Ghost Festival
Sat, Sep 05
|Grant Avenue
The gates of the underworld are open. Come to Chinatown for peace buns, incense, fortune sticks, and a straw dragon packed with ten thousand sticks of burning incense that only comes alive after dark. Free and open to all. Grant Ave, between California and Sacramento.
Time & Location
Sep 05, 2026, 2:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Grant Avenue, Grant Ave, San Francisco, CA, USA
About the event
On the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, the boundary between the living and the dead thins to nothing. Spirits return. We set the table for them — and for you.
Come by any time during the day. Peace buns are free while they last: steamed rice-flour buns with sweet red bean, offered at the altar and then shared with whoever is standing there. Light a stick of incense at the altar for your own ancestors, or for the wandering dead who have no one left to remember them. Shake the bamboo cylinder and draw a fortune stick and see where fate takes you. The Ghost King towers over the whole affair and will hold still for photographs.
Artist Leland Wong will be drawing on site and signing posters.
Stay until dark for the fire dragon to come to life. Ten thousand sticks of incense are driven into its…