Scottsdale’s tourism calendar follows the money: car auctions in January, golf in February, spring training in March. The city’s other calendar of civic days, faith holidays, cultural new years and small neighborhood rituals doesn’t make the glossy guides. Most of these events are free and most are small. Several move around the calendar or skip a year without notice.
This note covers what we could verify. For each item we name the organizer and where to check this year’s date. Where we couldn’t confirm something, we say so. Events big enough for their own page are linked; the rest are here.
January
Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration. Community Celebrating Diversity, a Scottsdale nonprofit, has run an MLK celebration for three decades. The 2026 edition was the 32nd, held at Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts the Thursday before the holiday. Arizona law gives the holiday its full name, “Martin Luther King, Jr./Civil Rights Day,” and that name carries a story Arizonans of a certain age remember. The event page tells it. Check ccdarizona.org in the fall.
February
Founders’ Day, February 26. The city’s 75th-anniversary booklet says that “each year on February 26, Scottsdale gathers to celebrate Founders’ Day,” keeping the work of Winfield and Helen Scott in view. State historian Marshall Trimble has appeared at it. The booklet doesn’t name an organizer or explain the date, and we couldn’t find a standing public listing. Look on the City of Scottsdale community calendar in early February. The Scottsdale Historical Society at the Little Red Schoolhouse is the other place to ask.
Lunar New Year. Scottsdale doesn’t hold a city-run Lunar New Year festival. The steadiest public observance we found is at Scottsdale Fashion Square, which hosted lion and dragon dances with Phoenix Chinese Week on Saturday, February 7, 2026, from noon to 2 p.m. It also marked the Year of the Snake on January 25, 2025. In 2026, Global Ties Arizona joined the City and Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West for “Lunar New Year Infused With Western Spirit: The Year of the Horse,” an evening reception on March 6. Nobody billed it as annual. The local link runs deeper than one party: Haikou, China, has been a Scottsdale sister city since March 2010.
March
Arizona Archaeology and Heritage Awareness Month. The State Historic Preservation Office describes it as a yearly event that happens every March, with tours, lectures and demonstrations statewide. For 2026, SHPO said it was not coordinating the month itself. Its partners still programmed events from March 1 to 31 and posted them as a shared list linked from azstateparks.com/archy. We found no Scottsdale venue on the 2026 list. The places most likely to fill that gap are the Huhugam Ki Museum on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, the McDowell Sonoran Conservancy and Scottsdale Public Library. Ask them in February. One rule applies all year: the Preserve’s rock-art sites are protected, and this site won’t give directions to them.
Persian New Year Festival. Nowruz falls at the spring equinox. The organizers of Scottsdale’s festival claimed about 15,000 attendees in 2025, which would make it one of the city’s largest cultural events. It has moved between Scottsdale Waterfront and the Civic Center, so check the dedicated page and the organizers’ announcements.
St. Patrick’s Day. Old Town marks it commercially, with no civic parade. In 2026 there was a ticketed block party and pub crawl on Saturday, March 14, starting around $19, and another crawl on the 17th. The better tradition is one town over. Since 1979, Fountain Hills has dyed its lake and fountain green.
April
Earth Week, Arbor Day and Tree City USA. The city stretches Earth Day into a week. The 2024 lineup included guided walks from Brown’s Ranch, Tom’s Thumb and Granite Mountain trailheads in the Preserve, a Bike to Work Day, xeriscape talks at Appaloosa Library, and an Arbor Day tree planted in front of the Center for the Performing Arts in Marshall Trimble’s honor. Arbor Day itself moves around:
- 2023: a ceremony at Chaparral Park on April 28. It marked the end of a program with SRP that removed 146 trees growing too close to power lines and replaced them with 441 new ones.
- 2024: an EarthFest at Cactus Park on April 20. The Scottsdale Garden Club, keeping a long club tradition, donated a Chinese elm, and Mayor David Ortega planted it with eight club members.
The Garden Club said the 2024 planting helped Scottsdale earn its 42nd year as a Tree City USA. That puts the first designation in the early 1980s, though we haven’t seen the Arbor Day Foundation’s record of the first year.
The tree habit is older than the designation:
- In 1976, for the Bicentennial and the city’s 25th anniversary, 200 donated trees went into city parks.
- Through the 1970s and 1980s, residents were urged to buy live Christmas trees and donate them for planting afterward. Many of the firs in the Indian Bend Wash parks along Hayden Road are those trees.
Check scottsdaleaz.gov in early spring for the year’s schedule.
Easter. We found no organized outdoor Easter sunrise service in Scottsdale, at Pinnacle Peak, Camelback, WestWorld or anywhere else; individual congregations may hold their own. The region’s most significant Easter observance is the Yaqui Lent and Holy Week ceremonies in the Town of Guadalupe, parts of which are open to respectful visitors on the Fridays of Lent and through Holy Week to Easter Sunday. They are the community’s ceremonies, not a show, and the rules are strict: no photographs, recording, sketching or phones, and no alcohol. Confirm each year’s schedule with the Yaqui temple community (480-505-5366) rather than relying on times printed anywhere else, including here. Scottsdale’s own Yaqui history is on the Yaqui families page.
May
Memorial Day. The city holds a free morning commemoration at the Scottsdale Memorial for the Fallen on the Civic Center Memorial Lawn. The city’s own booklet says the memorial was privately funded. American Legion Post 44 has hosted lunch afterward. Veterans Day in November follows the same pattern; both are on the linked page.
June
Native American Day, June 2. Arizona’s holiday statute names June 2 as Native American Day, observed the following Sunday when June 2 isn’t a Sunday. We found no Scottsdale observance tied to it. The neighboring Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community holds its own public celebration in September (see below). The Community itself was established by executive order on June 14, 1879.
Juneteenth. This one has a short, turbulent history:
- 2022: an ordinance made Juneteenth a paid city holiday, and the city planned a community celebration. The city’s own 75th-anniversary booklet puts its first Juneteenth celebration earlier, at Eldorado Park in 2020.
- 2025: a staff memo dated March 7 ended the city’s celebration after the council voted 5–2 to dissolve the diversity office.
- 2026: the Arizona NAACP organized a “Scottsdale Juneteenth.”
The dedicated page has the details.
Pride. Scottsdale has no civic Pride event. Experience Scottsdale points visitors to the annual Pride Crawl, a discount bar crawl through Old Town. The 8th was June 21, 2025, and the 2026 crawl was June 20. For more, visitors go to Phoenix: Phoenix Pride, and the LGBTQ+ bars of the Melrose District about 15 minutes west. Two civic facts frame it:
- 2021: the City Council unanimously approved an anti-discrimination ordinance.
- 2025: the same March memo that ended the city’s Juneteenth celebration also disbanded several city employee resource groups, including the one for LGBTQ+ employees.
Incorporation Day, June 25. It is the city’s birthday. In 2026 the city turned 75 with a breakfast party at Scottsdale Stadium. The history of how Scottsdale has celebrated itself at 10, 25, 50 and 75 is in our birthday note. The day itself is at June 25, 1951.
September
Hispanic Heritage Month and Fiestas Patrias. National Hispanic Heritage Month runs September 15 to October 15, and Mexican Independence Day is September 16. In Scottsdale the listings we found for those dates were generic or commercial, not community fiestas. The city stopped sponsoring Hispanic Chamber events in 2025. The town’s Mexican-American heritage shows up instead in late October and December:
- Día de los Muertos: the Civic Center festival and procession in late October.
- Miracle of the Roses: the pageant at the Old Adobe Mission in December, a tradition dating to 1949.
Whether Scottsdale’s Mexican-American neighborhoods once held September fiestas of their own is a question for the Scottsdale Historical Society’s oral histories. We haven’t seen it in print.
SRPMIC Native American Recognition Day. The Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, on Scottsdale’s eastern border, invites the general public to Native American Recognition Day (NARD) each September.
- 2025: Tuesday, September 23. A midday gathering ran at the Roundhouse Café from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. The evening program ran at the Two Waters Courtyard from 6 to 9 p.m., with traditional dance groups, an artisan market and a free dinner while supplies lasted.
- 2021: the pandemic turned it into a drive-thru. The Round House Café packed 1,000 meals, and the Two Rivers Band played chicken scratch while cars lined up for a mile.
It is an alcohol-, drug- and tobacco-free event; leave the pets, coolers and grills at home. We don’t know when the Community first held it or why it falls in September. Call Community Relations at 480-362-7740 or watch srpmic-nsn.gov in August. The Community’s other big public gathering, the Red Mountain Eagle Powwow, has its own page.
September 11. Scottsdale Fire holds a dawn Reading of the Names at the Civic Center. A week-long tribute display of oversized models, with a memorial card for each victim, is set up at the Civic Center, Mustang, Arabian and Appaloosa libraries and police and fire headquarters. For 2026, the 25th anniversary, the reading started at 6 a.m.
October
Diwali. We could not confirm a recurring public Diwali celebration in Scottsdale. One listing site showed a free family Diwali event at the Civic Center in October 2025, but we couldn’t confirm it with an organizer. If a public Scottsdale event exists, the city’s Civic Center event permits would show it.
A Greek festival, technically in Phoenix. Scottsdale’s Greek Orthodox parish, Assumption, at 8202 E. Cactus Road, was formed in 1987 and opened its present church in 2001. Its website doesn’t advertise a public festival. Some listing sites have given a Scottsdale address for the Valley’s big Greek festival, but the organizer’s site places it in Phoenix: the Phoenix Greek Festival at Holy Trinity Cathedral, 1973 E. Maryland Ave., which celebrates its 65th anniversary October 16–18, 2026. To ask Assumption about its own events, call 480-991-3009.
November
Veterans Day. In 2025 the commemoration began with patriotic music at 10:30 a.m. and the program at 11 on the Civic Center Memorial Lawn northeast of City Hall. It was free, with registration requested.
Thanksgiving races. The Scottsdale Turkey Trot began in 2025. Its 2026 race, a 5K run and walk followed by a wellness festival, starts at 8:30 a.m. on Thanksgiving at Embassy Suites by Hilton Scottsdale Resort, 5001 N. Scottsdale Road. Scottsdale Run Club, Phoenix Run Club, Black AZ Run and Revival Wellness host it; check scottsdaleturkeytrot.com. A separate Windgate Ranch Turkey Trot, a 5K and 10K, has raised money for young cancer patients.
The holiday is older here than the races. In 1899 the whole town picnicked at Hole-in-the-Rock. In 1939 Arizona kept Thanksgiving on November 30 after President Roosevelt moved it to the 23rd, so Scottsdale had two.
Sister Cities. The Scottsdale Sister Cities Association has scheduled a walking tour of the Civic Center and Old Town from City Hall for November 4, 2026. Past events include “Around the World in 80 Minutes” at Civic Center Library (2022) and a 2019 renewal of vows with Álamos. Per the association, the cities are Álamos, Sonora (1969, the first); Cairns, Australia (1987); Kingston, Ontario (1994); Interlaken, Switzerland (1999); Haikou, China (2010); Marrakech, Morocco (2012); Uasin Gishu, Kenya (2013); and Killarney, Ireland (2020). Killarney has a wrinkle: the association says the relationship began in 2015 and became official in 2020, while city historian Joan Fudala dates the twinning to 2016. Events are posted at scottsdalesistercities.org. The Rotary Club of Scottsdale lists Sister Cities among the causes it supports.
December
Miracle of the Roses. The Old Adobe Mission’s pageant for Our Lady of Guadalupe has been held since 1949, with a long lapse in the middle. The 2026 play is Saturday, December 12, at 4 p.m. inside the Mission, and Our Lady of Perpetual Help celebrates the feast-day Mass on the 11th. A Live Nativity follows on the 19th.
Hanukkah menorah lightings. Two Chabad centers light large public menorahs, one at Scottsdale Quarter and one at Soleri Plaza on the Waterfront. The dates follow the Hebrew calendar, so they move every year.
Kwanzaa. Kwanzaa starts December 26. Fudala notes that local celebrations center on family and take place at colleges, in parks and in private homes. We found no citywide public event.
What’s gone. The 1950s Santa Claus Fairy Tale Parade, the Kiwanis carol sing and the 1970s Las Posadas on the Civic Center are in Lost Scottsdale events. The lights everyone already knows about are in our holiday season note.
Moving feasts
Eid in the Park. On Eid al-Fitr in 2021, Thursday, May 13, the Islamic Center of the North East Valley held outdoor Eid prayers at Scottsdale Ranch Park, 10400 E. Via Linda. Takbeer began at 8:30 a.m. and prayer at 9 sharp, with registration required and worshipers asked to bring their own rugs and chairs. The center said it chose the park “for the safety and well-being of our community,” and that was a pandemic year. We haven’t confirmed whether the park prayer has continued. Both Eids move about 11 days earlier each year, so ask ICNEV in the weeks before. The Valley’s large public Eid festival is in Chandler.
How to use this calendar
The city’s own observances (Arbor Day, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, September 11, the birthday) go on the City of Scottsdale community calendar a few weeks ahead. Congregations and nonprofits post on their own sites and almost nowhere else. An aggregator listing is a lead, not a confirmation. Call the organizer before you drive, and expect to be one of a few dozen people at an event the brochures never mention.