Dollywood Harvest Festival 2026: Dates, LumiNights, and the New Boo Bash
Dollywood's Harvest Festival runs September 14 through October 31, 2026, presented by Humana, and it's the one Dollywood trip I plan the whole fall around. It opens right after most of the school schedule settles, which means a lot of the early-September weekends are the quietest ones of the festival season — worth aiming for if you want shorter lines.
What the festival actually includes
The day park runs as normal — all the rides, shows, and craftspeople — layered with fall food, live music, and the harvest theming. Dollywood says this year adds new fall experiences, and a few named touches have already been announced: the Village area gets Tassletop Junction, a grilled corn stand with corn-themed theming, and the park's new NightFlight Expedition dark ride is debuting this season, so first fall trips will be the first chances to ride it without summer crowds.
The big draw after dark is the Great Pumpkin LumiNights — over 12,000 lit pumpkins spread through the park at night, including the Hoot Owl Hollow area with the giant glowing owl. It's one of the few nighttime experiences that works well even with younger kids, because it's spooky-adjacent rather than scary: mostly light and glow, no jump-scare content.
Harvey's Boo Bash: the new after-hours thing
New for 2026, Dollywood is running Harvey's Boo Bash on October 16, 23, and 30, from 9 PM to midnight. It's a limited-capacity, ticketed after-hours event: you get into the park, enjoy what's left of the Harvest Festival, then stay for a separate nighttime party with treat trails, dance parties, themed snacks, and rides under the stars.
Honest take for parents: three nights only, limited capacity, and it's ticketed separately from a regular festival visit. It will sell out if it's as well-reviewed as the regular festival is, so if you want one of those dates, check dollywood.com as soon as your Boo Bash tickets go on sale rather than assuming they'll be available in October.
How I'd plan a Maryville fall trip
- Early September (before Sept 14): regular park, warm weather, cheaper ticket tiers in some windows. Good if your main goal is rides.
- Mid-September through October (festival days): this is the classic visit. Go for a full day and stay for LumiNights rather than splitting it into two visits — the night portion is half the point and after-hours tickets cost extra.
- Late October: best color-change odds, but the busiest stretch of the festival and the Boo Bash nights all sit in this window.
Drive time from Maryville is about an hour to an hour fifteen depending on where you start, and the park's address is 2700 Dollywood Parks Blvd, Pigeon Forge, TN 37863. Admission prices vary by date and are posted on the festival page at dollywood.com — they've gone up year over year, so I'd check current pricing before planning a resort-package stay versus a single day trip.
One practical note: festival weekends in September and October are also when a lot of the other Smoky Mountain fall events run, so if you're doing a cabin weekend, the Dollywood day is better as a single focused outing rather than squeezed between two other events.