For three autumn nights, one of Oakland’s quietest corners becomes a glowing celebration of art, nature and community.
This October, the Autumn Lights Festival returns for its 15th anniversary, transforming the Gardens at Lake Merritt into an illuminated nighttime landscape. From October 15 through 17, artists will use light, color and interactive installations to reimagine the gardens after dark, inviting visitors to experience a familiar Oakland landmark in an entirely new way. But the glow is only part of the story.
A Garden Built by Many Hands
The Gardens at Lake Merritt have been part of Oakland’s landscape for more than half a century. Their seven acres encompass a remarkable variety of themed gardens, each with its own character and horticultural demands.
Keeping them healthy is an ongoing job.
Gardens are living places. Plants grow, paths need attention, landscapes change with the seasons, and specialized collections require knowledgeable care. Volunteers have consequently become an essential part of the Gardens’ story, helping supplement the work of the city’s gardening staff and contributing countless hours to maintenance, projects and public programs. At the center of that volunteer effort is the Friends of the Gardens at Lake Merritt, or FGLM.
Founded in 2004, the entirely volunteer organization works in partnership with the City of Oakland to support and enhance the gardens. Its mission reaches beyond simply keeping plants alive. FGLM seeks to strengthen the Gardens as a place where people can learn about horticulture, encounter nature and find a measure of calm in the middle of an urban landscape.
That mission gives Autumn Lights its particular resonance. The festival isn’t simply an event that happens to take place in a beautiful garden. It helps sustain the garden itself. There is something inherently magical about seeing a garden at night.
During daylight hours, the eye is drawn outward—to the broad sweep of a landscape, the details of foliage, the colors of flowers. After dark, light changes the scale. A single illuminated tree can become monumental. A pathway can feel mysterious. Familiar plants become silhouettes and shadows. Autumn Lights plays with that transformation.
For three evenings, artists create illuminated installations throughout the Gardens, turning paths and plantings into an outdoor gallery. The result is part art walk, part garden stroll and part communal celebration. It is also quintessentially Oakland: creative, collaborative and rooted in a public place.
Visitors can wander through the installations, encounter artists’ work, browse an art market and enjoy the gardens in an atmosphere far removed from their daytime tranquility. The festival creates a temporary world of light, but the setting remains unmistakably the Gardens at Lake Merritt.
The larger significance of Autumn Lights becomes clearer when the lights go off. The festival is a fundraiser for the Gardens at Lake Merritt, with proceeds supporting the work of the Friends of the Gardens and the infrastructure and programs that help keep the gardens accessible to the public. In that sense, a ticket does more than provide admission to an evening of illuminated art. It helps support a public landscape whose value extends throughout the year.
The Gardens are free to visit during regular daytime hours. School groups, gardeners, families, photographers, plant enthusiasts and people simply looking for a peaceful place to walk all share the space. That accessibility is easy to take for granted until you consider what it takes to maintain such a place.
A thriving public garden doesn’t happen by accident. It requires gardeners, volunteers, donors, educators and community members willing to invest time and resources in something whose rewards are often measured in less tangible ways: a shaded bench on a warm afternoon, a child discovering a new plant, a gardener exchanging advice, or a visitor finding a few quiet minutes in the middle of Oakland.
The festival offers an evening of spectacle, but beneath the glowing installations is a quieter story about stewardship. It is the story of a public garden maintained through partnership and volunteer energy, and of a community choosing to invest in a place where people can encounter the natural world.
Light will spill across the paths. Artists will turn familiar corners into something unexpected. Visitors will move through the gardens beneath trees and among plants that, in daylight, quietly perform their own work of transformation. And when the festival ends, the installations will disappear, but the gardens will remain.
Autumn Lights Festival
October 15–17, 2026
6–11 p.m.
Gardens at Lake Merritt, Oakland