Most people who show up to Reyes Adobe Days treat it like inherited tradition, a fixture that has always been there because the building it surrounds has always been there. The math tells a different story. The adobe at the center of the festival dates to around 1850. The City of Agoura Hills has only owned it since 1983, which puts the building under public stewardship for 43 years. This year's festival, running October 2 through 4, is the 22nd annual. That means the celebration itself accounts for more than half of the entire time the city has held the property. Reyes Adobe Days isn't an old ritual attached to an old house. It's a relatively young civic habit that has, almost accidentally, come to define the majority of the building's public life.
That distinction matters if you live here, because it changes what the weekend actually is. This isn't a static reenactment frozen since the Gold Rush. It's a program the city keeps rebuilding year over year, with new sponsors, new grand marshals, and new activities layered onto old ground. Here's what's actually on the calendar, what's changed for 2026, and why the details are worth knowing before the parade closes your street.
The House Predates the City by More Than a Century
The adobe sits at 30400 Rainbow Crest Drive and was built by Jose Paulino Reyes, generally credited as the first home constructed in what is now Agoura Hills. The family line runs back further than the house itself. Jose Paulino was the son of Jose Jacinto Reyes, whose own grandfather, Juan Francisco Reyes, served as a soldier on the Portola expedition and was granted land in the area in 1837. So the building is roughly 176 years old, but the family's claim to this ground predates even that.
Los Angeles County held the property for decades afterward, and Agoura Hills purchased the site from the county in 1983, converting it into a museum and cultural center that includes the original adobe and a barn. Outside of festival weekend, the site keeps a quieter public schedule: self-guided tours run the third Tuesday of every month starting at 10 a.m., open to anyone who wants to see the place without the crowds, the pony rides, or the beer garden.
Twenty-Two of the Last Forty-Three Years
Run the arithmetic and the festival's age looks different against the timeline of ownership. If this is the 22nd annual event in 2026, the tradition began around 2005, which is 22 years into the city's 43-year hold on the property. In other words, for as long as Agoura Hills has owned this piece of its own history, it has spent just over half of that time throwing a party around it. That is not a coincidence of scheduling. It's a sign of sustained civic investment rather than a one-off heritage gesture that happened to stick.
It also explains why the event keeps shifting shape instead of calcifying into the same three days every year. Sponsors rotate. Grand marshals change. Programming gets added. This year, Malibu Brewing Company is the presenting sponsor of Friday night's ticketed event, and NBC4 reporter Brittany Hope, who joined KNBC in 2024 and has picked up five regional Emmy Awards for her reporting, is serving as the 2026 Grand Marshal. A festival that had simply calcified around a historic building wouldn't need a new face and a new beer sponsor every fall. This one clearly does.
Four Dates, Not One Weekend
The part most residents miss is that Reyes Adobe Days isn't contained to a single Saturday. It spans four separate dates, each with a different tone and a different crowd.
| Date | Event | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thursday, Sept. 24 | RAD Fiesta Luncheon | 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. | Agoura Hills Recreation and Event Center, 29900 Ladyface Court |
| Friday, Oct. 2 | Night at the Adobe (21+) | 6 to 9 p.m. | Reyes Adobe Historical Site, 30400 Rainbow Crest Drive |
| Saturday, Oct. 3 | Parade and RAD Festival | Parade steps off at 10 a.m. | Parade route: Reyes Adobe Road and Lake Lindero Drive to the Adobe |
| Sunday, Oct. 4 | RAD 5K and Kids Mile | 5K begins at 8:30 a.m. | Start and finish at Whizin's Market Square, 28914 Roadside Dr |
The luncheon on the 24th includes a costume contest and is aimed squarely at the daytime, community-club crowd. Night at the Adobe is a ticketed, adults-only evening built around live music, wine and beer, and an art experience on the grounds, priced at $20 in advance with no added fees. The Saturday parade and festival is the free, all-ages centerpiece, and the Sunday 5K closes the weekend with something closer to a workout than a party.
What Actually Happens on the Ground
Saturday's parade begins at the intersection of Reyes Adobe Road and Lake Lindero Drive and covers a one-mile route before ending back at the historical site. The festival that follows fills the grounds with the kind of programming you would expect from a site built around ranch-era history rather than a generic street fair: harvest-themed crafts, pony rides, a petting zoo, the Wings of Discovery animal exhibit, blacksmith demonstrations, and a drum circle. Food trucks cover barbecue, Mexican food, and ice cream, alongside local artisan vendors selling handmade goods. Organizers expect this year's three-day turnout to top 10,000, according to the Thousand Oaks Acorn's preview published in early September 2026, a figure that has held steady across recent years.
None of this is decoration for decoration's sake. The programming choices, pony rides and blacksmithing and harvest crafts rather than carnival rides and cover bands, are a direct extension of what the site is: a working museum about ranch-era Agoura Hills, not a rented field that happens to have an old building on it.
The 5K That Funds Something Real
Sunday's RAD 5K starts and finishes at Whizin's Market Square and kicks off at 8:30 a.m., with a Kids Mile immediately following for younger runners. A portion of the proceeds benefits the Malibu/Lost Hills Search and Rescue Team, the all-volunteer unit that handles search and rescue calls across the Santa Monica Mountains. If you hike Ladyface, Cheeseboro, or any stretch of the Backbone Trail with any regularity, this isn't an abstract charity tie-in. It's the team that would be dispatched if you or a hiking partner needed help out there. Finishers also receive two tickets to an upcoming show at The Canyon Club, which turns a fun run into a modest two-for-one with the town's live music venue.
Why the Math Is the Point
None of this changes what Reyes Adobe Days looks like on the ground this year. But knowing that the festival represents more than half of the building's entire public life changes how you should think about it. This isn't background scenery that happens to host an annual party. It's the primary way Agoura Hills has chosen to keep a 176-year-old structure relevant to residents who weren't born when the county still owned it. Skip a year and you're not missing folklore. You're missing the specific, current version of a civic project the city keeps actively rebuilding, sponsor by sponsor and grand marshal by grand marshal.
Specific set times, vendor lineups, and any last-minute changes tend to firm up in the final weeks before the festival, so it's worth checking the official Reyes Adobe Days site close to the date rather than relying on last year's schedule out of habit. Tickets for Night at the Adobe and registration for the RAD 5K are both live now.
Agoura Hills is the kind of place where a festival's arithmetic actually tells you something about the town's character, patient, consistent, and more invested in its own history than the calendar might suggest. If you're weighing a move here and want the version of this neighborhood that goes beyond festival weekends, from school-adjacent pockets to the quieter streets north of the 101, Michelle Price Realty Group is happy to talk it through. Request a confidential consultation whenever you're ready.
