The famed Gilroy Garlic Festival will return this summer after a five-year absence, the Gilroy Garlic Festival Association announced.
The 2025 version will be on a smaller scale—about one-tenth of the previous festival’s big crowds—and at a different location, the Gilroy Gardens amusement park instead of Gilroy’s Christmas Hill Park.
But its sponsors say visitors will be able to savor the signature garlic dishes, live entertainment and arts and crafts familiar to previous festival visitors.
The Gilroy Gardens event, scheduled for July 25-27, will have a limited capacity of just 3,000 pre-sold tickets per day.
“We are grateful for the continued support of the Gilroy community, city of Gilroy, Gilroy Gardens and our dedicated partners who have helped make this return possible,” the festival association announced March 28.
Additional event details, including ticket information and programming, will be announced in the coming weeks.
The event will be held at the South County Picnic Grove at Gilroy Gardens and will require a separate entry from the theme park. Tickets must be purchased in advance; no tickets will be available for purchase at the gate on the day of the event.
The last festival in 2019 ended in a violent tragedy, when a lone teenage gunman shattered the peace of the festival’s closing hours with a barrage of automatic weapon fire, killing three people and wounding 17 others before killing himself in a shootout with police officers at Christmas Hill Park.
For 41 years, the festival billed itself as the world’s biggest celebration of the pungent bulb, and Gilroy touts itself as the world’s largest producer of garlic. Local producer Christopher Garlic for decades has been a major source of funds for the festival and philanthropy in the South Bay.
Established to celebrate garlicky foods and the tight-knit Gilroy community, the event attracted worldwide visitors every July and raised more than $12 million for schools and local charities.
Garlic festival attendance approached 100,000 during the three-day event.
Efforts to bring back the festival began as early as 2020, but they were hindered by the pandemic. In 2021, the association attempted a smaller iteration at Gilroy Gardens, but post-shooting insurance costs proved too high to reopen the festival as a huge local event.
How can one volunteer to work at the festival? In the “good old days” I poured wine for Thomas Kruse Winery, which of course is no longer an option. But I would love to pour for one of the local wineries!