Scarecrow Festival Returns to Pioneer Florida Museum Oct. 10

The Pioneer Florida Museum & Village in Dade City opens its gates for the annual Scarecrow Festival on Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., giving east Pasco families a full day of fall activities at the museum's grounds on Pioneer Museum Road.

The festival is built around hands-on fun: visitors can build their own scarecrow, wander a pumpkin patch, and paint pumpkins to take home. Vendors and food trucks will line the grounds, and live entertainment runs through the day. Sphere's Bubble Show performs twice, at 10 a.m. and noon, and costume contests are set for 10:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.

Beyond the festival stage, the museum's regular attractions stay open. Kids can get pony rides or visit the petting zoo, and blacksmiths will run live demonstrations of the trade using period techniques. Admission to the festival also includes access to the museum's historic buildings and its model train displays, the kind of self-guided wandering that fills out an afternoon once the lines for pony rides get long.

The Scarecrow Festival also marks the unofficial start of the museum's busiest season. It leads into "Pioneers and Beers" on Oct. 24 and the Scarecrow Run 5K on Oct. 31, two events that have grown into regular fixtures on the Dade City fall calendar. Families who like the grounds on festival day often come back for the run three weeks later, when the same pumpkin-patch backdrop doubles as the race's finish line area.

Parking is on-site, and the museum recommends comfortable shoes for the walk between the scarecrow-building area, the petting zoo, and the historic village buildings spread across the property. Because the event runs rain or shine on an outdoor campus, organizers suggest checking the weather and dressing for an October afternoon in Florida, which can still run warm even once the festival banners go up.

The museum has not released a schedule for additional fall programming beyond the Oct. 24 and Oct. 31 dates already set.

Want more things to do this fall? Follow along on our Facebook page, browse our Dade City Community Website homepage, or join the conversation in our Community Forum. For more local happenings, check out our events coverage and community stories.

Header photo: Ebyabe / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.5)